Fear Island starts as Jenna (Haylie Duff) is found alone on an island by the police, all of her friends have been murdered & back on the mainland Detective Armory (Martin Cummins) has her as the number one suspect. However psychiatrist Dr. Chalice (Anne Marie DeLuise) feels Armory is being too hard on Jenna who has suffered immense strain & is still grieving over her dead friends but with six murdered teens to explain Armory wants answers, at first Jenna doesn't remember much but soon she starts to tell the story of what took place on the island & how her friends were murdered by a seemingly mysterious killer. As Jenna explains the events Armory changes his opinion & feels sorry for Jenna but Dr. Chalice notices that her story doesn't quite add up & that not all is as it seems...
This Canadian production was directed by Michael Storey & is a typically dull made for telly murder mystery affair with the overall feel of a teen slasher, unfortunately Fear Island never really delivers in either aspect. The script has all the teen slasher clichés like the young group of friends who head off to some isolated location for fun & find themselves being bumped off by some killer in what is pretty bad even for the sub-genre but the teen slasher angle is based around a murder mystery as the sole survivor retells her story & the events unfold with no great surprises until the double twist ending which I have to admit I guessed, I'm not just saying that either I did guess the exact twist ending with about fifteen minutes to go. I can't say it worked that well, things don't really add up & for the cops not to at least check this girls identity is just difficult to believe & quite how Jenna knew all the information she did is also a mystery, I mean how did she know that Meagan's parents would be away? Why let herself get caught by the police in the first place? Who called the police anyway? Why did the kids keep splitting up when a killer was running around? I mean the excuse to look for the girls Dog is flimsy at best, I suspect the Dog searching reason was laziness on the writers part. I mean would you run around the woods looking for a Dog if you knew a brutal killer was on the loose? No, I wouldn't either but the character's in Fear Island have no problem with the concept. At just over 80 minutes long Fear Island does tend to drag at times, I can't say I was ever enthralled by it or cared about what was going on & the lack of any memorable kills & an underwhelming twist ending means I would find it hard to recommend Fear Island & I can't say I would ever want to see it again.
Fear Island looks nice enough in a forgettable but nice enough sort of way, the cast are all obscenely handsome as you would expect & it's well made for what it is. There's not much horror here to be honest & the film concentrates on the mystery aspects more, the kills are really lazy & unimaginative which hurt it. Most of them are off screen & feature little in the way of blood, a bit of blood splatter is as gory as it gets. This being a made for telly flick there's no sex or nudity either.
The IMDb says Fear Island had a budget of about $4,000,000 which it total rubbish, there's no way this cost that much. Filmed in Vancouver in Canada. The acting is alright, it's not as bad as it could have been & as I said the cast are suitably easy on the eye. Minor celebrity Haylie Duff stars.
Fear Island is a teen slasher with a fairly basic murder mystery tacked on, I can't say it's particularly brilliant but it's well made & if you don't guess the twist ending like I did then it might surprise you, but I doubt it & there are still a few things which don't feel right or add up properly. The lack of blood, gore & nudity doesn't help either. Not the worst film ever made I suppose but far from the best.
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