Fantasy Island-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Five Strangers are invited by Mr Roarke to an island where all their fantasies are about to come true. 

What if everyone in the world were given a chance to have one of their fantasies come true?

Would the world be a happier place?

Or would the people be unsatisfied?

Most people would want more of their fantasies to come true. Why only one?

And if some of them had their own fantasies come true and were happy, how much longer before they desired more and wanted more of their wishes to come true?

Then there’s the question of jealousy. Oh, they asked for a rich lifestyle? I should have thought of that instead of having a best friend for life. Money can but anything, right?

Being satisfied is really not how we are built, are we? We will always want more. We would want better health, more wealth, more friends, a loving family...the list is endless.

It won’t be long before animosity and jealousy would arise and our fantasies turn into something wicked to the point we want to hurt someone.

Fantasy Island is basically something like a genie in a bottle. It is run by Mr Roarke and the thing is, you only get one wish.

An interesting premise, isn’t it? How lovely for the characters. Except this is a horror movie and of course, something bad is going to happen to everyone.

Okay, we do want to see how bad innocent wishes can go. To be honest, the story is great up to the second act. Then somewhere down the third act, the story becomes a little convoluted, cliched and desperate.

Throughout the movie, I was wondering how this didn’t get a higher rating. The ending explained it all.

FANTASY ISLAND Movie Plot

The story begins with a girl running scared into an office and dialling a number. She pleads for help as she has been kidnapped. The person on the other line knows her name and she realizes she isn’t going to be helped. Seconds later, she is dragged out of her hiding spot.

In the next scene, we see a plane arriving at Fantasy Island. Julia, dressed in a white employee uniform informs Mr Roarke of the arrival.

Julia greets the passengers as they disembark. The first one is Melanie, a young woman who instantly shows some attitude about the WiFi is unavailable. There are two interracial brothers who keep high-giving one another: JD and Brax.

Then there’s a man called Patrick and a woman called Gwen whom he instantly hits on.

They all go to their rooms and Melanie takes out a photo frame from her luggage. It’s a picture of her before she went blonde. She’s also hugging a guy and smiling.

The guests are given drinks and later they hallucinate a charred man.

Much later, the brothers complain of not getting a room to which Mr Roarke replies that they fantasized about having it all and that was exactly what they would receive. He takes them to a manor where a party is already underway. Bikini models and hot men in bathing suits are also what the brothers desired.

Mr Roarke explains to all the guests that they all get to have one fantasy come true and they must see it through in its natural course. Of course, it means things are going to go wrong.

Gwen fantasizes about a deep regret she had, declining the proposal of her boyfriend. She could have had a family, including a daughter.

Mr Roarke takes her along a passage, dripping with black liquid and asks her to enter through a door. She is taken back to five years ago at the restaurant where she was proposed to.

At first, she believes it to be all an act but when her boyfriend shows no signs of being part of an act, Gwen realizes she is actually getting to relive the past. Her boyfriend proposes and she says yes.

Next, it is Patrick’s and Melanie’s turn. She explains her fantasy is to see her bully from high school being punished. She is led to an elevator that opens to a control room.

Patrick has always desired to be enlisted in the army, so he gets to do exactly that. It isn’t long before he is captured by soldiers and taken to meet their lieutenant who turns out to be Patrick’s father who had died long ago.

Patrick is in utter disbelief mode. He assumes the man before him is an actor, but when he answers to all questions, the Lieutenant also realizes he is meeting his son who was only nine years old when he left him.

Patrick informs his father that he died in Venezuela to which his father replies that they were heading that way and would reach tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Melanie turns on buttons to find her nemesis and school bully Sloane tied to a chair. She believes it to be a hologram but when Sloane’s video of cheating on her husband goes online, Melanie realizes that it is really Sloane.

Sloane’s husband makes a call and is pissed off at his wife for cheating on him. Sloane can’t do much except watch silently at her marriage crumble.

Soon enough a doctor enters with a stitched mouth. He’s supposed to be Melanie’s psychiatrist who talked so much that Melanie wished she could stitch up his mouth. He takes great pleasure in torturing Sloane.

Melanie acts quick and uses the buttons to save Sloane. Later, she smashes the glass and rescues Sloane who calls her Meredith instead of Melanie.

Gwen wakes up to find she has a daughter now as well and is embedded with memories of giving birth to her. Somehow Gwen isn’t as enthusiastic.

JD and Brax have an interesting night but wake up to find themselves attacked by masked men. Mr Roarke explains that the manor belonged to a drug lord. True enough, the house is equipped with a panic room and an artillery room.

Somewhere along the lines is Mr Roarke’s own sad story where he had heard about this magical island granting wishes and had brought his ailing wife here only to have her die before she could reach.

Julia keeps having nosebleeds and we see more black dripping liquid. Also, the ones who are hurt on the island have their eyes turn black.

Melanie and Sloane are wandering through the island when they come across a man called Damon who says he was brought to the island to have his fantasy come true but then things turned into a nightmare and he was left roaming around with a knife.

He saves the girl from the stitched up mouth doctor and knows that Melanie isn’t kidnapped like Sloane. Melanie denies this, knowing Sloane would be pissed if she found out that Melanie had revenge fantasies. She tells her that Meredith was possibly behind this all. Sloane, clearly not good at remembering her classmates’ names, believes her.

Elsewhere, JD and Brax run for cover in the pinch room, but one of the models closes the door before the brothers get in. The brothers are caught by the druglord’s men but Brax uses cunning to turn the tables and wears one of the masks and holds up a grenade to show the other assailants that if he doesn’t let them go he would release the pin.

Turns out Patrick’s father was on this very mission. There’s a shootout, and just when the good guys think they’ve won, the bad guys are brought back to life by whatever black slime is controlling them.

Patrick’s father is killed. JD is killed as well.

Gwen in the meantime realizes she didn’t want her fantasies to come real this way. She also speaks with Julia and finds that Gwen’s biggest regret wasn’t that she said no to the proposal but that one incident when she couldn’t save someone’s life.

She goes to Mr Roarke and tells him that her fantasy entailed her to change the moment she regretted the most and it wasn’t the one that included her boyfriend.

She is led to the door that opens to an apartment building that is burning down. She runs up the stairs and finds JD and Brax coming down. But they don’t recognize her. She bangs on a door and a guy called Nick pleads to be let out as he is stuck.

Gwen promises help and runs downstairs to the policeman and asks for help in breaking down the door. It is Patrick. He doesn’t recognize her either and is too cowardly to go inside. He insists they wait for the fire department.

Gwen goes back up and chokes on the smoke. She is saved by Julia.

Melanie and Sloane are attacked by the immortal doctor again. This time Damon saves them by throwing himself and the doctor off the cliff. But not before leading them to the heart of the island which controls all fantasies. He even gives the girls a number to call the plane that will help them escape and magical water that will open the truth of the island.

Gwen returns and regroups with the others. Melanie and Sloane have apologized to each other and the plane is on its way.

Gwen tells them all that her regret was not saving Nick’s life and that all of them were brought here for a reason: this is all someone’s revenge fantasy. They all knew Nick. Melanie tells them she’s related to Nick because they were going to go on a date the night of the fire. But we had cancelled due to low self-confidence. If she had agreed on the date, Nick would have been alive.

They all go out when they hear the plane. Julia wonders what is going on to which Mr Roarke tells her that “she wants them all together”.

That sure narrows it down as to whose revenge fantasy it is. I mean, Melanie was the only one who kept gazing at a photograph of an unknown guy.

FANTASY ISLAND Ending Explained with Spoilers! 

Still, the others are made to believe it is Julia who is playing them. They run to the springs and all of them are attacked by their regrets and fears. Sloane by her own self who is upset she has changed. Patrick by his father who is alive once more. Brax is attacked by evil JD. And Melanie just sees the charred image of a boy.

They all manage to overcome their enemies. They go to the spring and Melanie kills Patrick. She explains how she was the one who brought them all to the island for revenge. She had finally found her soulmate after years of feeling she wasn’t good enough and he was taken away from her because the others had been cowards.

Mr Roarke reveals that Julia is his wife who keeps dying over and over. Julia tells him to let her go. The poor thing didn’t know she was his wife.

Mr Roarke says that while the island must grant every wish, he also gives an idea to Sloane that she’s the only one without a wish.

Sloane drinks the water and wishes Melanie is with Nick forever. The very next instant, Melanie is pulled into the water by Nick.

Brax complains about how Melanie was such a sap for going through all this for one guy she had been on one date with.

That was a bit harsh. So what if she had fallen for a guy over one date to the point that she hated the fact that he was taken away from her. Yes, the revenge and killing part was too much, but a blatant disregard for her feelings was a little cruel.

Later, Brax is shown standing with Mr Roarke. Apparently, a deal was made where he decided to stay back so that JD could be brought back to life and he could go to his girlfriend. This was Brax’s fantasy. He also reveals that in college he got a tattoo of the word Tattoo. Mr Roarke decides he would call him Tattoo from now on.

On the plane, Sloane repents torturing Melanie and Gwen tells her the only thing left to do was to forgive herself.

The end.

The ending sure left a bad taste in the mouth. In a blink of an eye, Melanie is pulled into the fountain. The bullies and cowards decide they should just forgive themselves since they can’t change the past.

Patrick is hailed as a hero. Okay, so even though he couldn’t save Nick all those years ago, he did repay by saving the others.

If only the other characters were shown to be more remorseful. Melanie was misguided but nevertheless a victim of bullying. I wished her character had been better written.

They could have shown that Nick and Melanie had been a serious couple and that she was too heartbroken after he died. Sloane, being a terrible person even after high school, to the point that she cheated on her husband because he was pulling away, was given an excuse.

Somehow, this movie showed that being a bully will make you win. Those tormented by bullying to the point that they cannot have normal, functional lives, will be branded as lunatics.

The whole bullying angle should have been handled better.

Scare scale: 3/5