CinemaSerf
Aug 9, 2023
4/10
Now I reckon the ghost of Leslie Banks would be spinning in his grave were he to see this really poor remake of what was originally quite a dark and menacing story. That role here is taken by Casper Van Dien who ostensibly comes to the rescue of a man and his son who are shipwrecked onto his island. Thing is, his charity isn't quite all it is cracked up to be and this becomes clear when the father and son "Marcus" (Judd Nelson) and "Sanger" (Chris Tamburello) find themselves out and about in this paradise. Not as tourists, but as prey for a lethal manhunt. Sadly, this really has very little to redeem it. It's adequately enough produced, but unfortunately the range of on-screen talent presented here is all well past it's use by date. Van Dien got away with it when he was young and fit; Judd Nelson when he was young with attitude and I'm never quite sure why Bruce Dern ever got away with it - but here they just take a seriously mediocre script and offer us a sterile and really quite uninteresting take on a story of life and death. It's an adaptation of a short story and, to be fair, they can be difficult to string out for ninety minutes. Also, still being fair, director Justin Lee had little idea how to do that imaginatively when he started, so maybe he just should't have bothered.