L'Île des morts

Just awful. Horrible. No redeeming qualities in this one, which isn't always bad for a b-flick -- as long as it doesn't take itself seriously. This one does, though, and its all the worse for it.

There is no plot. There are flies killing people on an island off NYC used to bury the unclaimed dead (hence the title). Not giant flies or special flies, just flies. Why are flies killing people? No explanation is even attempted. They just are.

This movie proves once and for all that Malcolm McDowell's career is over. Everyone involved with this piece of trash needs to be spanked by the ghost of Ed Wood.

I have my own theory about why there are so many flies in this movie. Flies love feces.

Really. I love decaying villages and buildings, wastelands and deserted landscapes. That's what was hoping for, even when I knew the movie itself would be bad. "A ghost town" there is, on that island. Maybe some eerie film footage? Laughable, the whole movie, the story, the mood, everything.

In the "Ghost village" they enter one building. About two minutes later they are back in that cheap house, where they keep returning to half of the movie. The flies... well okay I knew how this aspect would turn out... just horrible. There's rarely any plot, and still there are holes in it that were perplexing at best. Why would the flies "kill" those other people when you get the conclusion? Why is Malcolm's character blowing up something all of a sudden?

Avoid this peace.

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.

This film doesn't make too much sense. A sergeant (Talisa Soto) assigned to missing persons, is looking for a little girl on an island where the indigent are buried. At the same time some real estate magnate (Malcolm McDowell) wants the island for homes for the homeless. Is it something he is doing out of the kindness of his heart, or does he have some plan connected to the pharmaceutical industry.

No matter, they are all stuck on the island and the flies are p*ssed. Yes, flies. No alligators, or bears, or Godzilla, just flies. How much terror can you get from a swarm of flies? There are worms too, but that is just disgusting.

Talisa Soto (Licence to Kill) is better than this. McDowell is washed up.

This movie was given to me as a gift. So because I own it, I really wanted to like it. Sucks to be me.

The thought that kept bothering me throughout this terrible flick was, "Doesn't anyone have a cell phone?" It was made in 2000. Cell phones were rampant by then, especially in New York City.

The movie had great promise. Hart's Island is a real place, and surprisingly, I've never seen it in a movie before (with the exception of Michael Douglas' "Don't Say a Word" which happened to have one scene on the island. The movie wasn't about the island.) The history of the island is extremely interesting and quite scary. The movie failed to capitalize on any of the history and instead tried to scare us with....

HOUSEFLIES!!! I guess flies and maggots are cheaper and easier to get than zombies. Totally ridiculous.

Plus, the movie had the usual things you see in stupid, poorly written horror movies (i.e. cars that won't start, love interest between two unlikely heroes, etc.).

What a waste. Can I regift it?