"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.
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.