The Isle

I caught a moment of this flick on cable and was intrigued. After checking out the positive reviews here I recorded it on my DVR to watch in its entirety later.

The movie does draw you in at the beginning, with the standard "sailors beached on a desolate isle." They soon realize that strange things are afoot here, and we are given to understand that supernatural events are transpiring.

However, the movie then loses its forward motion. You can only have so many ghostly appearances, frightening nighttime walks in the woods, and otherworldy voices singing before your attention starts to flag. The movie lacks the arc of suspenseful tension that you find in Hitchcock's movies. By the long-hoped-for end one is yawning.

Skip it and watch reruns of Gilligan's Island.

The production was very low-budget clearly even from the start, the acting is wooden and it feels like watching a play at a theater. The story at first interested me a bit, but after 20 minutes, I realized this was not going to be a good movie. I gave it my all to stay awake and watch the whole thing, but it never really got better. It was boring and hard to watch because of the low-budget. I know this is not horror and I did not go in thinking it was horror, but I still found it very slow even for a period drama. It's just not compelling. And I usually like indie films, but this is just bad. I'm sure the people who made the movie wanted to do something good, but sorry, it really needed more work to even be remotely enjoyable to watch.

My friend made me watch this because it was supposedly good according to RT, but we both regretted our choice very much. Visually, The Isle looks great. There is some nice scenery here and there. It isn't horror nor thriller, it stays slow and works on building the mood and remains slow throughout the whole feature. Way too slow for its own good. I'm all for building atmosphere, but there just isn't anything here. The story is subpar and the characters don't draw you in. There is clearly a lack of funds here, which doesn't bother me, but still, it shows and it hurts the overall production. The narrative is weak and the film as a whole feels flat and drab. The actors could definitely use an acting class or two. I give it a few points for the nice location, but that's it. We both did not like this movie at all and it made us sleepy, if anything.

This film was painfully stretched out to 96 mins that should have been a short film. I get that this was a low budget production, but even for a C-grade film, everything about it was amateurish. The directing and editing was terrible, the score was way too evident throughout, the acting decent in some parts, terrible in others - but I'm guessing that was the director failing to direct his cast. The concept story itself was interesting, but the screenplay dragged this films pace to a snails speed and felt like 2+ hours. It's clearly obvious all reviews above a 7 are all fake/paid - as they are the only review, or 2 or 3 others on the same day. It's an honest and generous 3/10 from me.

There's the makings of a good supernatural mystery in here somewhere but sadly it doesn't really come together. The lonely Island shrouded in most: check The unfriendly local man with something to hide: check The benevolent ingénue: check The ethnic minority character who wants to explore the island alone: check The spectre hovering in the background: check BUT it's sadly much less than the sum.of it's parts. There's no compelling story and no real scares.