Plain Fantastic

Although I've never watched a minute of the iconic 70s tv show it is based on, I liked Fantasy Island (2020). The premise: What if Fantasy Island were a Blumhouse horror instead of a tv fantasy drama? 

It starts, as always, with the plane, but there is no Tattoo. The plane is met by Parisa Fits-Henley, a young woman who says she just started working there. The guests are:

• Lucy Hale, the type of woman who keeps her nose in her phone and threatens a 1-star Yelp review when she discovers there's no coverage.
• Austin Stowell, a strapping young man with a military air.
• Ryan Hansen and Jimmy O. Yang, a pair of bros who are also brothers, who high-five ALL (high five!) THE (high five!) TIME (high five!)!
• Maggie Q, a sad and slightly withdrawn woman.

We meet Mr. Rourke, and it is Michael Pena - which is fine, I guess. I know he's done a lot of things, but to me, he is Luis from Ant-Man. He explains that everyone will get their fantasy, but they can't change, and they must live the fantasy out to its conclusion. The first one he bestows is on the bros: They get a pool party at a party house full of super models. When Hansen comments that his brother is gay, they reveal that there are plenty of male super models. When Yang says he isn't that shallow, they reveal a fully stocked marijuana dispensary, and now he's happy.

Hale's fantasy isn't quite that innocent. She wants revenge on the girl who bullied her in high school. Rourke leaves her in an underground bunker, where a woman is tied to a chair behind glass. It is her bully, Portia Doubleday. Hale has a whole control board of automatic tortures for her. Now we're getting Blumhouse. But Hale begins to realize that this isn't a hologram or actor, and the tortures aren't special effects. So she freaks out and rescues Hale. Now they are on the run from "Dr. Torture".

Stowell's fantasy is to be in the Army, like his dad was. He couldn't join the Army, so has been in the police. In his fantasy, he is not only in the Army, but in his dad's unit in Viet Nam, on the tour that got him killed.

Q's fantasy is to accept the marriage proposal she rejected once. The day after she accepts the proposal, she wakes up with a husband and daughter - her fantasy is real. When she realizes how her fantasy shaped reality, she demands another fantasy, to save the life of someone she accidentally killed. Even a possible family isn't worth another's life.

While everyone is facing ugly twists in their fantasies, everything is going great for the bros. At least that's what I was hoping - while everyone else dealt with heavy karma, these two bozos would just have some shallow sex and maybe do some dope. Nope. The party house used to belong to a drug lord, who sent a death squad to take it back. It doesn't take them long to kill big brother Hansen. So now there's a body count.

There are a few twists on the plot, what the real fantasies behind the fantasies are. I thought these were pretty original, until I thought about it a little and realised they are old as the hills (see for ex, And Then There Were None).

In general, I enjoyed this a lot. The horror was fairly mild, the humor was handled well, and everything worked out for everyone - except when it didn't. And in the end, Rourke gets his Tattoo!