Boss! Boss! De lame, it’s de lame!

A frothy, fantasy series from the late seventies/ early eighties may seem like an odd choice for a 2020 horror revival but when has that ever stopped Blumhouse, the McDonalds Of Horror™, from hoovering up an IP and then figuring it out afterwards. The result is a disappointingly underdeveloped, haphazard tales of the entirely expected where the premise of the original TV series is augmented with a Wikipedia’s skim-worth of “Lost” tropes to produce a movie which dishonours both series.

When five strangers win an all-expenses-paid trip to renowned resort Fantasy Island, they can’t believe their luck. The island seems like everything you could dream of, but it quickly becomes apparent you should be careful what you wish for as the fantasies begin to unravel in unexpected and potentially lethal directions.

The movie has a decent enough cast but rarely gives them much of anything to do. Some of them – Lucy Hale, Maggie Q and Michael Rooker do the best they can with what they have to work with but others, such as Austin Stowell oscillates lazily between looking confused or bored, entirely disconnected to whatever’s happening around him.

At the heart of “Fantasy Island” the movie, as in the TV series, is Mr Roarke, here played by a subdued Michael Peña but the role isn’t written as the benevolently Mephistophelean maestro of the TV series. Indeed, one of the starkest differences is that this Mr Roarke’s shirt needs a good iron and it’s hard to watch the rest of the movie without being distracted by how aghast Ricardo Montalban would be at his successor’s sartorial shortcomings. This Mr Roarke seems less in control than controlled by the Island, an entity which the script desperately wants to be a major character in the movie yet seems unwilling to put in the narrative effort to really build up.

As it tries to ramp up the tension and peril by crossing over the various storylines to reveal its interwoven master plan, it doesn’t realise you’re already two steps ahead of it and while it relentlessly ensures that it telegraphs every single plot twist, you won’t need the hints.

The only truly horrifying thing about the movie is how it ends, promising that this may only be the beginning for this franchise. Thankfully, the cruel (wise?) gods of the box office seem to have prevented that fantasy turning into our collective nightmare.