Uninhabited

Beth and Harry goes on a island to spent a holiday there for ten days. Soon they discover some signs and realize they are not alone there and somebody else lives and visits them at night when are asleep. After finding an old cabin also they found an book that has something written and so will know that a girl was raped and killed there one hundred years ago and now seek revenge on every man that stays on the island.

I was anxious to see this movie because of the poster that looks alright but it was a disappointment. This is not a horror not even a thriller. Based on real events? Maybe for the first ten minutes.

I think that you don't need to pay too much attention at this film but instead let yourself be mesmerized by the stunning landscape.

Some people seem to have really, really hated this movie, and I'm surprised that it managed to elicit such a strong reaction from them. I found this to be perfectly watchable, even though it's a bit routine -- even clichéd. I don't see how it could cause either strongly positive or negative feelings.

Instead of a haunted house, the setting is a haunted island, but the effect is the same. Like your stereotypical haunted house movie, mysterious happenings start spooking our young lovers, ratcheting up the creepiness factor as time goes on. Footprints in the sand that start and stop suddenly. Oooh, mysterious. Whispering and sobbing that might just be the wind. Oooh, spooky. A run-down shack that they somehow never noticed before and a grave nearby. Oooh, creepy. A book that helpfully explains the origins of the ghost and its M.O. Oooh, cheap narrative device... I mean, oooh, scary.

It's nothing you haven't seen before, but it's competently shot. The acting has been highly criticized by others, but it didn't really bother me. The soundtrack was more annoying, I thought. It's basically some woman channeling the pain of the world in soulful, non-lyrical vocalizations. You know the kind. I hate it, and I wish people would stop scoring their movies with it. However, even this failed to give me a strong emotional response. Whereas some other reviewers have judged this movie quite harshly, with the requisite "worst movie ever" assertions, I just can't work up the strong emotional response necessary to hate it. It was OK. I'd recommend it to people who love supernatural suspense stories, as long as they don't have very high standards. It's a generic ghost story about generic people on a generic island, haunted by a generic ghost. If you're looking for more than that, then skip it.

Ever since the tale 'And the sea will tell' by Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce Henderson became a bestseller, numerous attempts have been made to discover the horror behind uninhabited islands. This Australian film comes straight from the director Bill Bennett, who successfully directed his critically and publicly acclaimed flick 'In a Savage Land.' Bennett, however, disappoints this time.

Beth (Gerlandine Hakewill) and Harry (Henry James) set off for a vacation to spend an idyllic time at an uninhabited island somewhere in the Coral Sea, off the eastern coast of Australia. Once there, the couple is fascinated by an appealing tropical climate, turquoise waters, white sands and pleasant winds. Led by their basic instincts the two begin combing the island and finally discover an old house and an abandoned grave with a name 'Coral' on it. They also become victims of lunatic shark-hunters, who tie the couple and leave them to die. The couple is however saved by an unseen entity, who forces the lunatics to take to their heels. The apparition's presence in the island is validated by 'her' sobs in the air.

Further investigation leads Beth to a diary, which belongs to someone who came to the island long back. The diary accounts the history of island claiming it to be haunted by the spirit of a girl named Coral. The diary says Coral worked for a fishing crew at the island a century ago, and once got a deadly stone fish sting. She was subsequently raped by other men of the crew. Now Coral turned into a ghost and had since been avenging her death by killing anyone who comes for spending vacation in this tropical paradise.

The film suffers from lack of content. Since the content is meager, several unnecessary sequences have been added. The photography is great but gets less attention from the director. The director could have used the silence of island for building a great atmosphere, which unfortunately 'Uninhabited' falls short of. The ending is fizzy and doesn't explain much about Beth's future. Harry dies in a jiffy and his part ends abruptly. I don't think its a good idea to be so concise when it comes to direction. I would anytime prefer to read 'And the sea will tell' or watch 'BBC's South Pacific episodes' instead of watching this somewhat childish and awkward creation or film, if this could be called one.

When Harry (Henry James) and his girlfriend Beth (Geraldine Hakewill) travel by boat with the sailor Jackson (Bob Baines) to one of the six hundred islands in the Northeast coast of Australia, they expect to camp along ten days alone in a desert paradisiacal place. However, they sooner find footprints on the sand and missing things in their camping and they believe that it is a child's prank that might be camping on the other side of the island. After an incident with two weird foreigners, the couple finds that a woman called Coral (Tasia Zalar) was raped and murdered one hundred years ago in that island and her ghost feels an intense hatred for men.

"Uninhabited" is a low-budget ghost story that unfortunately does not scare. The character Harry has the most inappropriate attitude with the two strangers and the performance of Henry James is not good. Geraldine Hakewill is beautiful and convincing, but the plot is too weak and does not help the young lead couple to have better performances. The impressive location in the introduction is a wonderful lost paradise. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Paraíso do Medo" ("Paradise of the Fear")

I watched 'Uninhabited' as part of a MIFF double-horror special at Nova, Melbourne. This was second on the bill after 'The Clinic', which itself was a slightly-below average movie.

The film is entirely set on a gorgeous entirely secluded remote island on the Great Barrier Reef. A couple are on a ten-day romantic escape to this island, and early on in their getaway mysterious and unexplained happenings commence.

I actually enjoyed the first portion of the movie, the building of mystery was handled reasonably well and I held some genuine curiosity towards what was happening on the island (being set on an island I was half expecting some kind of black smoke monster to appear at some stage!).

However this intrigue dissipated pretty quickly. The acting, particular of the male lead was noticeable pretty poor and the film struggled to create any meaningful suspense or horror. The only part of the film which managed to create any kinds of feeling of suspense was the remoteness of the setting, but this is fairly stock standard for the horror genre. The plot was very clichéd and very predictable.

Overall an uninspiring film which unfortunately didn't build on mystery created early on in the film.