Or "Dark Beach" as the German title says. Beautiful people on an island and every sort of logic is thrown out. Or sinked and drowned the moment they sat foot on the island. The actors try their best to make it worth watching, but it really drags. The question is, does it drag from the first moment for you or 5 minutes in? Only you can answer that question, if you are willing to watch it.
It was a nice touch for me to see (and hear) Greek being spoken in the movie (by actual Greeks),but it doesn't really add anything to it. There is some sort of "Retribution" towards the end and the overall story wouldn't be that bad ... but unfortunately it is.
Plot summary
Harry and Beth wanted a different kind of holiday. So they chartered a boat to drop them off on a remote coral island on the Great Barrier Reef. Paradise? The island was idyllic, surrounded by a wide reef, covered in palms and full of birds and other wildlife. It was small and totally deserted. Or was it? After snorkelling, making out and having fun, the young lovers soon come to believe that there is someone else on the island. Things go missing from their camp and then they discover someone else's footprints in the sand. At first amused, this becomes disturbing as they realize the island has a ghost! From paradise, the holiday quickly turns into a nightmare of arguments and mistrust... Inspired by actual events.
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Lonely Island
Overlooked.
I am not surprised that there isn't a lot of loving for this movie. Sold as a horror movie, but lacking any real substance, and yet it actually does a lot of things pretty well.
The two leads are both very amiable, and do a decent job, admittedly neither is working from a wonderful script. I liked the pacing of the film, the beginning so bright, so beautiful, so full of expectation and bliss, a contrast to the end, which was dark and chaotic.
The suspense was good, and well built up. I kept expecting someone to jump out of the trees, or for it to have a moment or two similar to Lost.
The ending let it down, it deserved better, and the obvious scene, where we knew the fish was going to get one of them.
A decent watch. 6/10
A haunted house movie set on an island
Some people seem to have really, really hated this movie, and I'm surprised that it managed to elicit such a strong reaction from them. I found this to be perfectly watchable, even though it's a bit routine -- even clichéd. I don't see how it could cause either strongly positive or negative feelings.
Instead of a haunted house, the setting is a haunted island, but the effect is the same. Like your stereotypical haunted house movie, mysterious happenings start spooking our young lovers, ratcheting up the creepiness factor as time goes on. Footprints in the sand that start and stop suddenly. Oooh, mysterious. Whispering and sobbing that might just be the wind. Oooh, spooky. A run-down shack that they somehow never noticed before and a grave nearby. Oooh, creepy. A book that helpfully explains the origins of the ghost and its M.O. Oooh, cheap narrative device... I mean, oooh, scary.
It's nothing you haven't seen before, but it's competently shot. The acting has been highly criticized by others, but it didn't really bother me. The soundtrack was more annoying, I thought. It's basically some woman channeling the pain of the world in soulful, non-lyrical vocalizations. You know the kind. I hate it, and I wish people would stop scoring their movies with it. However, even this failed to give me a strong emotional response. Whereas some other reviewers have judged this movie quite harshly, with the requisite "worst movie ever" assertions, I just can't work up the strong emotional response necessary to hate it. It was OK. I'd recommend it to people who love supernatural suspense stories, as long as they don't have very high standards. It's a generic ghost story about generic people on a generic island, haunted by a generic ghost. If you're looking for more than that, then skip it.