Synopsis.
Passengers on their way to a tropical paradise crash at sea and find themselves on a deserted island. Desperate to survive the elements and infighting between survivors, they find that the island has more in store for them than they could ever imagine
Review.
The latest Mahal production features a group of random strangers stranded on an island paradise. It may sound nice and relaxing, but they are not alone.
The first striking thing about the film is the intolerable early camerawork. It’s a little too close, with choppy in your face cameras not showing a wider shot. The early set-up and narrative of this Lord of the Flies and Lost mash-up probably looked good on paper, but turned out to be a waste of an interesting story and certainly as waste of any character development time. Luckily, as the film goes on, we don’t really care about such things as the number of island visitors reduces by the minute and things get going.
There are some credible creature effects which are synonymous with these producers, favouring the old-school ways, rather than overdone CGI. The weird zombie-predator bad guys kind of work and offers a welcome relief to the excessive ham-acting. Mixed in there are some good, somewhat comedically naff, gore scenes and good dollops of low-budget cheese to keep it relatively fresh and laughingly enjoyable.
The standard of acting though does not help and time is spent on characters who are not long for the screen. It’s all seems a bit slap dash and I’m really not sure why. There’s some good tongue-in-cheek at times with a few Karen’s on show, alongside many other entertaining stereotypes.
The film certainly isn’t one of the better, or even more entertaining, Mahal Empire films. For all it’s low-budget, B movie appeal, this one is sort of a bit too self-aware in the worst of ways. It’s annoyingly stranded for the first half between laboured and drawn out. There’s just very strange and pointless story elements and then a very weird and unexpectedly bleak climax. The film just seems to be a bit rushed, too ad-hoc and sadly amateurish. I actually found it difficult to get through at times.
Sadly, you can’t win them all. There’s fun to be had here for some, but it just wasn’t for me. Too many things were off to make it an enjoyable watch. A good idea sadly became a not so good film.
Bermuda Island is out in the US on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD from January 20th, 2023, through Gravitas Ventures.
