Island of the Dead (2000)

You won't be disappointed!

Great Film overall

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

McDowell has certainly come a long way since A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and CALIGULA. Here, he owns an island chocked with the graves of nameless souls who bit it in the Big Apple and have now turned into swarms of digital dots. The cast beats their heads frantically, but there's no getting away from the nits. Malcolm can't escape this, either. Playing a billionaire businessman, the old Brit seems rather like a loopy immigrant among a cast of Anglo blahs. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out - bring your swatters, it's an inexpensive special effects treat for anyone who keeps lizards or birds as pets. The flies are wide open on this low budget buzzer.

"Island of the Dead" is a thoroughly disappointing and barely worthwhile creature feature.**SPOILERS**Trying to gather case evidence, Sgt. Melissa O'Keefe, (Talisa Soto) heads out to Hart Island, as a graveyard kept there for unclaimed bodies might help her case. While there, she finds that billionaire industrialist Rupert King, (Malcolm McDowell) is also on the island as he begins to turn it into a brand new area for helping the underprivileged in society. While both are out finishing up their actions, they manage to stumble upon a massive swarm of flies living on the island that are infecting them all with a deadly virus that soon has a swarm erupting from within them as well, making most of their escape attempts impossible. Finally getting an idea on how to stop the ever-growing swarm, they put it into action in order to get off the island alive.The Good News: There's a few things to this one that keeps it going. One of the bigger issues is that there's a couple of actually entertaining attack scenes that are quite well-done, mostly the main attack sequence on the bunker at the end. While not all that graphic, the site of thousands upon thousands of insects buzzing around the complex and their frantic attempts at trying to break through the glass leaves a lot of rather fine points to the sequence, making their eventual break-in all the more fun when it occurs, as well as their escape idea that actually works really well. There's also another good attack scene earlier on, as a set-up, that makes for some really enjoyable times when the swarm emerges over the tree-line in the distance and really puts it into gear following that, from the foot chase through the undergrowth and the attack on the jeep which is a lot of fun. There's a rather cool sequence as well where the swarm attacks a boat while attempting rescue, where the only thing heard is the buzzing followed by the never-ending blaring of the horn, indicating the worst right in front of everyone that is somewhat enjoyable. The only other part that works here is the initial discovery of the dead bodies, where their deformed and rotting bodies suddenly appearing out of nowhere followed by the look make quite an impact. Otherwise, this one isn't all that great.The Bad News: There was a couple problems with this one. One of the biggest ones is the fact that this one is just so slow-going in the first hour, as it focuses way too much time on the useless subplots that don't even feature into the film all that much. It's nearly an hour into this before there's even one attack, because the first part of the film is consumed by sequences detailing it's two main subplots, the search for the missing child and what the building plans for the site include. The first one has a somewhat important factor and is a little more excusable, but the fact that it's mostly just a never-ending series of scenes of her wandering around the bunker looking over everything or pointless, irritating banter between the workers about her or the task at hand really makes those scenes somewhat intolerable the longer they go on. The second one about the building plans is a novel idea, but the fact that this soon becomes the primary focus is what drives this down, since it usually devolves into pointless bickering between the two or his noticeably frustration at having to be around them, and the cliché of it aside, doesn't really provide any sort way to make the film interesting. These scenes are just utterly boring and quite uninteresting, are just utterly dull and provide nothing for the film at all, despite their potential and makes for some really hard times trying to get into the film from the beginning. Also quite problematic is the fact that there's just no real blood or gore in this one, despite it being a creature feature. Those more accustomed to more violent fare from the genre will get almost nothing in here, as it's bloodless deaths to begin with, edited so as to be completely unseen in the current state or just not there, and then coupled with the fact that there's several stumble-upon-the-bodies scenes to be found is where it gets even worse, not having anything at all to do this with and make for an all-around disappointing area for this. The last flaw in the film is the complete lack of explanation for what the flies are doing in here, as there's nothing to say about them. It completely skips over what they were originally, nothing is mentioned about why they're going on the attack, or what the cause was, and we don't even get an explanation for why they lay eggs inside victims only to have them burst out later, if that is indeed what is happening since it doesn't make it clear that's what happening. There's a couple other minor flaws here, but these are the most noticeable and damaging ones.The Final Verdict: With only a few things actually worthwhile about this one and a slew of problems, this one is easily a massive let-down. Really only worthwhile for those that like their horror films dry with a touch of drama to the proceedings, while those that are more into other types should heed caution.Rated R: Graphic Language and Violence

I found this move interesting, mostly because it was filmed on Hart Island, which is sort of the Potter's Field for New York City. Hart Island is a desolate, God-forsaken plot of land in Long Island Sound that is totally off-limits to everyone except the prisoners from Riker's Island who are assigned burial duty there.The acting was O.K., except for Malcolm McDowell, who came across as cartoonish. Talisa Soto was nice to look at, but her character was, as someone else had mentioned, wooden. There was no meaningful character development, and you never really cared about any of the characters. The plot was not even remotely believable. It was a *boring* movie.But it's biggest sin was the cinematography. Virtually the entire picture was shot about 2 stops too low, probably to add a feeling of gloominess to the picture, but it just made watching the movie irritating. And when they got to the night scenes, you couldn't see much of anything. Just a bunch of voices in the dark.Unless you're very interested in Hart Island, don't waste your time or money renting this one.

Donald Trump-like developer Rupert King (Malcolm McDowell), missing persons detective Melissa O'Keefe (Talisa Soto), the New York City Mayor, and a number of inmates and an assortment of other characters converge as they are all headed towards Hart Island. Hart Island, just off of the Bronx in Long Island Sound, is home of the infamous "Potter's Field"--a massive graveyard of the poor and unknown. King has plans to turn the island into government assistance housing. When the graves are disturbed however, supernatural forces come into play to put an end to any tampering.Island Of The Dead begins with a lot of promise. The initial voice-over by O'Keefe is interesting, as it explains that she was an abandoned infant and is now searching for a missing girl from a famous year-old case. The introduction of two prisoners, handcuffed to a "meat-locker" drawer in a morgue as they wait to go on burial duty at Hart Island is intriguing. And King is at least passable when we first meet him (McDowell vacillates between passable and good throughout the film).Our trip over to Hart Island, following our cast of characters as they ride the ferry across Long Island Sound, is good, too, and Mos Def, whom we meet on the boat, is funny—deservedly, Mos Def has already been in a large number of films since Island Of The Dead. Even Hart Island is captivating at first. I'm not sure if it was actually filmed on Hart Island, which is still under the supervision of the New York State Department of Corrections and has very limited access, but whatever the location, it is beautifully stark--an appropriate setting for a horror film. With one exception, there is a lot of good cinematography throughout the early part of the film, including the landscape of (or standing for) Hart Island and especially shots of some marvelous dilapidated buildings, where some scenes are set and more should have been. The exception to good cinematography in the early part of the film is a digital video pan across some old buildings, shot from a vehicle or on a dolly, which becomes pixelated halfway through. Apparently, this was the only footage extant of this, and they really wanted to use it, because despite the flaw, it is inserted a couple times.The story up to this point, although perhaps a bit slow and a bit odd at times, such as the dialogue scene between King and the Mayor where we cannot hear what they're saying but instead hear a rap song, is more than satisfactory. Most of the facts and history of Hart Island given in the script are actually true, even though some of it might seem implausible to someone unfamiliar with this New York City oddity (another film which is partially about Hart Island, and worth watching if the island intrigues you, is Don't Say A Word (2001)).However, somewhere around the middle, unfortunately just about the time that the horror material really begins to kick in, writer/director Tim Southam loses his pacing. Not too long after that, he also loses the plot. Some of the horror material is okay--the effects are decent for a low-budget, direct-to-video release, but the pacing kills most of the tension that would have been available. Worse, once we become more familiar with the menace, the "rules of the game" get progressively more ambiguous. We don't know why the menace attacks the way it does or who it does, and late in the proceedings, a few characters take inexplicable actions. By the end, it seems like Southam is drawing thriller plot clichés out of a hat and rushing through them because he's about to run out of film. It's even more of a shame because the beginning was so promising.My final verdict, while positive, is just slightly so--a 6 out of 10.