Fantasy Island: All talk, no 'FUNtasy' in this dumb idea of a horror remake

By Jim Slotek

Rating C-minus

The ‘70s/’80s primetime series Fantasy Island as a horror film? The thought of a Happy Days movie makes me shudder more.

Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island is a confusing choice for a horror adaptation by Blumhouse Productions, the maker of effective, near-bloodless horror films like Paranormal Activity, Insidious and the Oscar winner Get Out. Its source material is a pop culture reference too old for the usual demographic that attends horror films.

Mr. Rourke (Michael Pena) welcomes fantasy-holders Lucy Hale and Austin Sowell.

That series – kind of The Love Boat on an island - is mainly remembered for Ricardo Montalban as the dapper Mr. Roarke, who ran a resort with magical powers, capable of taking you through a fantasy with harmless Monkey’s Paw-like repercussions of self-discovery. And, of course, there was Tattoo, Rourke’s diminutive sidekick (Herve Villechaize), and his trademark call of “De PLANE!”

Roarke in this dull horror attempt (directed by Jeff Wadlow of the horrible Truth or Dare) is played in the traditional white suit by the somewhat less dapper Michael Peña (who gamely tries to pronounce the word “fantasy” as “FUNtasy”). Someone does rather meekly call out, “The plane!” but it’s Roarke’s assistant Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley). (The character of Tattoo does make an appearance, which is all I’ll say about that).

And it even starts out the same way the show traditionally did with, yes, a plane – full of winners of a “Fulfill Your Fantasy” contest. Usually the horror of a free trip to a tropical island is the eventual hard-sell on a time share. But just the look on the face of the zombie-like staff tells you this ain’t your father’s Club Med.

All these references will be lost on the Gen-Z horror crowd to whom the movie is pitched. All the premise they will absorb will be that this is an evil island that kills people one by one (not fast enough in some cases).

Said plane disgorges a small party of stereotypes. There’s the shallow fun girl Melanie (Lucy Hale), the sad, joyless Gwen (Maggie Q), the racially-mixed, partying bro siblings JD (Ryan Hansen) and Brax (Jimmy O. Yang), and the ab-crunching wannabe soldier Patrick (Austin Stowell).

Given that their whole purpose on the island is to get killed (or narrowly escape, depending), the whole “fulfill your fantasy” thing weighs the narrative down like an anvil. There’s so much dubious exposition about how each person’s fantasy interacts with another’s, that not only is the audience confused, by the umpteenth explanation, they may also be asleep.

For the record, their fantasies include: a bisexual orgy with a techno dance soundtrack (JD and Brax), a chance to say yes to the marriage proposal she turned down five years earlier (Gwen), the chance to experience battle (Patrick) and Melanie’s revenge against a high school mean-girl named Sloane (Portia Doubleday).

How these fantasies intersect (and whose fantasy it ultimately is) becomes a narrative house of cards, involving a South American paramilitary leader (Kim Coates), a scruffy wild-man in the jungle who knows the island’s secrets (Michael Rooker) and an off-the-island, previously-unknown shared history that the writers of Lost would have rejected as too convoluted.

Suffice to say, this is all getting explained when scary things could actually be happening. My “FUN-tasy” throughout was that the credits would roll.

Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island. Directed by Jeff Wadlow. Starring Michael Pena, Lucy Hale and Austin Sowell. Opens wide Friday, February 14.