SJinSeaTac

Privileged and vapid twenty somethings talk a lot and whine about their poor privileged lives in Hawaii. Some people die, with not enough character development to even care about anyone at any point. Paper-thin characters with a paper-thin plot. Not even a fun waste of time. This truly is the bottom of the barrel for "remakes."

Bryan Bertino started his career with a small film called the Strangers. With a modest budget, the film was a huge financial success for Universal. Since then he has pulled away from the director's chair, choosing to write and produce content instead of directing. In the wake of the Strangers release, many wondered why with such a huge success would Bertino stop directing. Well, I think this film shows pretty clearly why that is the case. Without a major studio to rein him in, Bertino has little to no command of his own material, relying on several "made you look" death scenes to convey the cruelty of his narrative structure. This is not new territory to horror, and Bertino wastes Marin Ireland in a lead role (which she elevates above and beyond the material on the page), meandering around, creating atmosphere over plot, resulting in a tired, boring, run of the mill art film with nothing surprising up its sleeve, and nothing to say about the family dynamics of the characters that it purports to know so well about. Do yourself a favor and re watch something else.

This movie was not scary, nor clever, and a waste of time. To me, many of these reviews are probably planted by the creators of this movie and possibly Shudder as well. If you want to be incredibly bored for about two hours, go ahead and watch. Otherwise, watch something else on Netflix. Maybe watch it again.