sol1218
**SPOILERS*** Brain twisting slasher flick that runs out of gas halfway through its story when you start to realize that the only survivor of a massacre on Fear Island is on the verge of being committed.The survivor Jenna, Hayfie Duff,was found wondering aimlessly around the deserted island with a bloody knife on her. Having no memory of what happened and even whom she is Jenna is interrogated by both local detective Amory, Martin Cummins, and police psychiatrist Dr. Jamie Chalice, Anne Marie DeLuise. Suspcted in the brutal murder of six collage students on the island as well as their pet dog Perrier Jenna's memory slowly starts to come back in a series of episodes or flashbacks where we as well as Det. Amory and Dr. Chalice start to make some sense of this tragedy. The only problem is that they have to take Jenna's word on what happened to the students since no one else is alive collaborate it!As the movie goes on or plods along that suddenly almost out of the blue a new element or character is added to it in the young girl Regina, Brenna O'Brien. It's Regina who turns out to be the key to what happened in the movie but as we soon find out she's been killed off before the film even started! It was Regina's death that set into motion the series of brutal murders on the island. But who committed them only Jenna in her subconscious mind knows. And as her memory starts to return she'll be able to identify who the killer is that's if the killer doesn't get to her first!***SPOILERS**** The big surprise is saved for the very end when Jenna's parents who were on a trip to Cambodia came to the hospital to visit their very disturbed and heavily medicated daughter. It's then that the whole truth came out to what Jenna knew about the string of killings as well as who she really is. But by then most of us watching had figured that all out making the big and unexpected "surprise ending" anti-climatic.
c-e-ofor91
(Contains spoilers) Unless im missing something here everyone involved in this movie did not give any effort to solving the so called mystery. The script does not work in anyway unless you decide not to do things that anyone trying to solve a case would do. They had a picture of the believed "Meghan" all along and were able to see that Jenna(Duff) and Ashton never dated. So why were they not able to verify anyones true identity. Were there no school photos or anything to look at and see that someone is not who they say they are. If they were able to get a headshot of "meghan" was there no name attached to it. I mean they simply just listened to a crazy girls story without trying to verify anyones identity.The only way the movie works is if you believe that there was no way to verify anyones true identity and not find peoples true family connections. They were able to find Jennas parents but couldn't find the real sister. The whole movie makes no sense and they basically just sat around and listened to a girl talk and then let her go. It was a bad movie with an unbelievable plot.
jonathanruano
"Fear Island" is a teen horror film about a psychotic murderer killing teens on an island. It is a cross between "I still know what you did last summer" and "The Usual Suspects" - and that is its problem. "Fear Island," apart from having a terrible title (can you think of a less original title than "Fear Island"?,)is too formula-driven and obviously a rip off of other films. When I watched "Fear Island," it struck me that no one who was involved in the making of this movie wanted to do anything intelligent or novel with the plot or the characters. I read the other two reviews and they credit the film for its twist at the end(though their applause is very tepid), but even that twist was ripped off from another movie, called "The Usual Suspects." Indeed, if you watch the ending of "Fear Island" and the ending of "The Usual Suspects," you are essentially watching the same film.There are also problems with the logic in the storyline. By the time "Fear Island" was released, most teens would have owned their second or third cellphone, which raises the question of why none of the characters in this film had cell phones to call the police when they realized that there was a killer on the island. Perhaps they missed out on the technological revolution, not to mention pop culture. The other logical problem is with the interrogators - a male police officer and a female psychologist. The former is convinced that Jenna (Haylie Duff) is the killer, while the latter is more skeptical. But by the end of the film, they both arrive at the opposite conclusion. Why? Don't they listen to each other? Didn't it occur to them to have a meeting of minds? Do police solve crimes by operating in their own little bubbles? In the minds of the people who made this film, apparently so. Also there is only one killer on the entire island and he has no lethal weapon (like a gun or explosives), which raises the logical question of why he is so successful in wiping out the teens, three of whom do bench presses in their spare time. Are the teens so stupid that they cannot find an intelligent way to murder or imprison one killer? The final problem is with the characters. There is not one sympathetic character in this entire movie. As Jenna (Haylie Duff) pointed out early in the film, her friends went to the island to have sex, get drunk or both. Now people who live only for the purpose of drinking and having sex are unlikely to generate much sympathy (in fact I was more interested in the possibility of sex scenes) -- which is why we really do not care when they get killed and that is the main reason why this film does not succeed at being scary. Furthermore, the fact that these characters are stupid means that they are not interesting to watch either. So what you essentially have are a bunch of boring, brainless teens who are not worth caring about who are systematically killed over the course of the film in rather unoriginal ways by a somewhat more intelligent mass murderer. So thumbs down for me.
