Fantasy Island is what happens when you take a cheesy 70s TV show about wish fulfillment, ask, “But what if it was DARK?” and then hand the script to a committee of studio notes and a random plot generator.
It’s marketed as Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island, but it feels more like Spirit Halloween’s Lost Screenplay: shiny, cheap, and vaguely haunted by better ideas.
Welcome to Wish.com: Island Edition
The premise is simple enough: five strangers win a trip to a magical tropical resort where their deepest fantasies come true… and then, shocker, those fantasies go wrong. That’s not a bad setup; it’s basically Goosebumps for adults.
The problem is that instead of exploring the psychological horror baked into the idea of “careful what you wish for,” the movie sprints past nuance and dives face-first into:
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Contrived twists
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Logic holes big enough to fly the island’s plane through
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Dialogue that sounds like it was written by someone whose primary exposure to humans is Instagram captions
We’ve got:
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Gwen (Maggie Q), whose fantasy is “the life I regret not choosing.”
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Patrick (Austin Stowell), whose fantasy is “be in a war like my dead dad.”
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Brax & J.D. (Jimmy O. Yang & Ryan Hansen), whose fantasy is “Instagram flexing with guns, girls, and pools.”
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Melanie (Lucy Hale), whose fantasy is “revenge on my childhood bully.”
All of those could be interesting in a horror context. Instead, they’re treated like side-quests in a glitchy open-world game, occasionally intersecting by accident and driven by the world’s least reliable magic rock.
Mr. Roarke: Concierge of Confusion
Michael Peña plays Mr. Roarke, who’s supposed to be a mysterious, all-knowing, morally ambiguous puppet master. Instead, he feels like a stressed hotel manager who’s one noise complaint away from quitting.
His whole deal is:
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He grants each guest one fantasy.
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The fantasy must “play out to its natural conclusion.”
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He’s doing this so he can keep his dead wife magically alive via some sort of mystical island loyalty program.
This would be compelling if:
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The rules of the island were consistent.
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His moral conflict felt like anything other than “I read this in a different, better script once.”
Instead, he spends most of the film solemnly insisting, “The fantasy must be fulfilled,” while the island just… makes things up as it goes along. Time travel? Sure. Zombie cartel? Why not. Torture dungeon? Absolutely. Teleporting everyone around the jungle in ways that no longer correspond to geography, sanity, or real estate? You bet.
Roarke comes off less like an enigmatic mastermind and more like a middle manager stuck enforcing company policy written by Satan’s HR department.
The Fantasies: Discount Horror Sampler Pack
The movie splits the characters up into different fantasy scenarios, and it’s like watching four different bad horror movies fight for screen time.
1. Gwen: The Sliding Doors Fantasy
Gwen’s fantasy puts her into an alternate timeline where she said yes to a proposal years ago and now has:
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A loving husband
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A beautiful home
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A child
For about 8 minutes, it almost becomes an emotional horror film about regret and second chances. Then the movie remembers it’s supposed to be spooky and turns it into a half-baked mystery about a fire that killed a guy named Nick, and somehow every other character in the movie was there when it happened.
It’s less “mind-bending twist” and more “group project where everyone lied about reading the brief.”
2. Patrick: Call of Mediocre Duty
Patrick’s fantasy sends him into a jungle war scenario where he meets his dad, Lt. Sullivan, and gets to work out his daddy issues amid gunfire, explosions, and what I can only describe as Costco-brand Predator extras.
It wants to be emotional and intense, but it mostly feels like those VR military simulators your weird cousin won’t shut up about. There are soldiers, bullets, and absolutely no coherent point beyond “war is bad and also magic?”
3. Brax & J.D.: The Broke Bros of Horror
These two are here for:
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Party mansion
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Drugs
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Hot people
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Pool
Their fantasy turns into a cartel kidnapping scenario with torture and machine guns, but it’s never quite scary or funny enough to commit to either tone. It does, however, include:
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A panic room
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Grenades
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A surprisingly heartfelt brother moment wedged between bullets and bad one-liners
One of them dies, then gets resurrected later through the power of… staying on the island? Who knows. The island’s magic system is “vibes only.”
4. Melanie: Revenge, but Make It Overcomplicated
Melanie’s fantasy goes off the rails in a different way. She wants to torture her old bully Sloane, but then it turns out Sloane was literally kidnapped and forced onto the island.
So what starts as a mean-girl revenge fantasy goes sideways into:
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Unethical consent issues
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Torture porn lite
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Then—eventually—the revelation that Melanie is actually the mastermind behind everything
Yes, the big twist is that the whole movie is secretly her fantasy. Every other character was just an extra in her revenge opera over that one guy Nick dying in a fire years ago. It’s meant to be shocking; it mostly just makes you realize how much time the movie wasted pretending any of these people had interior lives.
Island Rules: Written in Crayon on a Napkin
Everything on Fantasy Island is powered by:
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Glowing rock
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Magic water
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The strong belief that audiences don’t care about internal logic
The island’s abilities include, but are not limited to:
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Time travel
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Resurrection
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Teleportation
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Zombie creation
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Telepathic fantasy customization
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Infinite costume changes
The “rules” change scene-to-scene depending on what twist the writers felt like adding. Magic is fine in horror; nonsense is not. When anything can happen, nothing matters.
By the time the zombie Nick drags Melanie into the water because Sloane wished she’d be “forever with him,” it’s less “clever poetic justice” and more “Sure, whatever, just roll credits.”
The Tone: Horror? Comedy? Just Confused?
The biggest problem with Fantasy Island is that it never figures out what it wants to be:
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A dark, character-driven psychological horror?
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A campy, meta reimagining of a goofy TV show?
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A supernatural thriller with mystery elements?
Instead, it tries to be all three and fails at all of them. Moments that should be scary are undercut by hammy dialogue. Moments that should be emotional are buried under cartoon logic. Moments that could be fun and campy are played weirdly straight.
It’s like the movie is constantly clearing its throat and saying, “We’re very serious about this absurdity.”
The Ending: Tattoo You Didn’t Order
After all the chaos, explosions, stabbings, sacrifices, and rock magic, we get one final insult: a clumsy origin story.
Brax decides to stay on the island so his dead brother J.D. can live, and Mr. Roarke offers him a job as his assistant. Brax says his brother used to call him “Tattoo”, and Roarke smiles like the movie just did something profound instead of shoehorning in a reference no one asked for.
It’s supposed to be a clever prequel twist tying this mess back to the original series.
Instead it feels like:
“Congrats, you survived our plot maze! Your prize is… lore. Please clap.”
Final Verdict: Fantasy? Sure. Horror? Only for Screenwriting Teachers.
Fantasy Island had:
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A solid premise
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A talented cast
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A low budget but high potential
And then it buried all of that under lazy writing, incoherent rules, and about four too many twists.
If your fantasy is:
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Watching a bunch of half-developed ideas crash into each other
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Seeing a great concept turned into a PG-13 theme park ride
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Yelling “Oh, come on” at your TV at least six times
Your wish is granted.
Everyone else? This is one island vacation you can confidently skip.
