jlthornb51 A demon hidden in a piñata threatens the very lives of some hapless teens on an island from which there is no escape. The Hillenbrands never disappoint and this motion picture is certainly no exception. The horror is unrelenting as the film moves at a breakneck pace with one thrill after another pummeling the audience. The evil is unimaginable and incredible in its pure intensity. An exciting cast of young people, fresh faces destined to be stars tomorrow, give superb performances as they fight for survival against overwhelming odds. The Hillenbrands use their cameras as a surgeon wields a scalpel during brain surgery, giving their film vision and excitement beyond what one would expect from a low budget production. This is a truly frightening, magnificently realized horror film that is epic in its sheer power.

kuhdsh I must say, this movie is a joke. From a distance, the plot sounds like a funny comedy from the 80's like "Weekend at Bernie's" or something. But as soon as you find out that this film is meant to be a serious horror flick, it officially becomes your first step towards the cliff dive that is "Demon Island" (or as some know it as, "Pinata: Survival Island"). A demonic piñata? Really? That's the best you could come up with? The "Wizard of Oz" has a more frightening plot (and at least that had attacking, flying monkeys. Now THAT will scare you).What really put the icing on the cake for me, though, is the "special effects" that were used. Now, don't get me wrong, there were a few (and I use the term lightly) shots that I thought made the "monster" look kinda cool, but everything else just made it look like it came straight out of a Power Rangers movie. Seeing what the "monster's" vision looked like just made it worse. I was like watching a frame-by-frame video of a photo-negative kaleidoscope. About 3/4 of the time I couldn't even tell what was going on, making it look like just a giant mess of colors on the screen. I do have to applaud the effects artists for making things like the explosions look just like those from the terrorist shooting games in the arcade. Bravo.Overall, I have to say this looks more like an attempt at a more grown-up version of the "Scooby-Doo" movie (especially the scene where they are being chased on the 4-wheelers, and if you've seen both movies, you'll know exactly what I mean). The only people I would recommend this film to are ones that are either really high or want a bad movie to laugh at.

psjnky A MUST BUY for insomniatic nights!!!! If I could give it a -1 I would. I was stuck between 2 of my favorite late night reruns and looking for something to kill an hour until my show came on. Came across this and thought I'd watch for a while. How bad could it be? I mean at the very least I get to watch attractive college chicks run around the jungle in skimpy clothing, there's worse ways I could spend my hour... boy was I wrong In recent years I had grown accustomed to watching late night awful movies, Sci-Fi originals mostly. I always felt that you couldn't get much worse than "Ice Spiders", though once again this movie proved me wrong.I was frequently annoyed by the fact that through the "Pinata Vision" (aka predator ripoff) it looks like this birthday toy was a meer steps behind the victim, yet when the camera reverts to a view of the victim coming at the camera, its no where in sight. The fact that the creature has the ability to fly but yet can't catch these people has me bewildered. It has a hatchet that it is god awfully inaccurate at throwing, but luckily it works like a boomerang and comes back. I also love how one guy gets riped in half (or so they say) but everyone else meerly gets stabed. Or how about the first girl that sees it, watches it kill the guy, then later thinks the guy is in the tent.........Long story short, other than the occasional laughable stupidity of an attempt to make a scary movie, the movie is dull and boring. I attempted to stay up and see how it ended, though I couldn't do it. I fell asleep and missed my show. I might go buy the movie, simply for those insomniac moments.

gavin6942 A group of college students goes to an island to party with tequila and underpants on Cinco de Mayo. But when two of them find an old pinata washed up on shore and break open the shell, they find it contains more than candy and child-friendly goodies: it has the evil spirits of an ancient tribe! The same night I watched this on DVD, two of my friends saw it on American Movie Classics (of all places) after a night of drunkenly revelry at the bar. My friend Kenn asks, "Why was AMC showing this crap? It was good for a laugh when you come home from the bar and flip it on, though." And my friend Nick concurs that "it totally sucked but as Kenn said it was funny after the bar grocery store run." I think this is the nicest thing you can ever say about "Demon Island" (which I saw as "Pinata: Survival Island").The cast was respectable (one guy from "Sabrina", one from "Buffy" and Jaime Pressly at her most annoying). But the decent cast didn't make this film any more bearable. And I can't blame them -- they did a fine job, and even the writers can't be blamed because the plot was good enough for a cheap horror film.The blame must be placed completely on the directors. First, there was the awful "pinata vision". I have yet to find a film that uses the "killer vision" feature without it looking cheap. I can accept "killer cam", but not some actual weird coloring to show what they would see like. Do I need to know that the pinata sees through some distorted ruby goggles? No.But moreover, the biggest issue was the use of the computer effects. They looked like crap. Complete crap. The pinata kept changing shape and size, and all these looked like crap. I have heard the directors didn't like the midget in the rubber suit. Well, the scenes with the midget in the rubber suit at least made sense -- he looked like the pinata rather than some weird shape-shifting thing. And it would have helped the continuity, since the giant pinata suddenly got very small when they needed him to. What the heck? So that's my beef -- a cheap plot with some of the worst effects just in my face for an hour. The best part of this film, as others have noted, is the first ten minutes with the flashback to the natives. I think this was done beautifully. But it isn't good enough to even make up for ten minutes of the later crap I had to watch. Can I say crap one more time? Because it was crap.Don't buy this, don't rent this, don't watch it on AMC. In fact ,if you were unlucky enough to catch it on AMC, send them an e-mail and tell them how much you hate them for wasting your time with this rubbish. Because when I want to see movie classics, I wan to see something that isn't only five years old and worth less than one of my kidney stones.