As far as slashers go, Island of Blood would ultimately prove fairly uninspired, despite drawing its plot directly from an Agatha Christie book. It had many of the ingredients necessary for making a good horror film, but due to poor direction and production, some elements would fall by the wayside, and what was left was insufficient to create a solid product for consumption.

That is not to say that it is not worth watching, because all slashers, no matter how terrible, provide at least a little bit of redemption. Usually, that ends up being the amount of blood or nudity that is featured or the method used in the killing of individuals. The same would apply here. The story was interesting enough; a bunch of wannabe actors show up on a remote island that is out of the way and hard to get to —a killer’s paradise, if ever there were one. Over time, each of them is killed according to the lyrics of a punk song. The first murder that takes place is in a pool whose temperature is at the boiling point, and it makes for a fairly gruesome spectacle. It also makes one wonder what band would sing about boiling people alive or at least allude to such a concept. More of the same follows, such as acid coming from the shower and so forth, and it is when the killer kills that the movie is at its best.

The worst in this movie is nearly everything else. The actors who play the visitors to the island are not as good as one might hope. Almost like those who star within are hoping to be actors by playing people who are hoping to be actors. They are not particularly terrible to be fair, but they lack a sort of charisma, and there is no empathy felt on the part of the audience when they start to lose their lives. Those who wrote and directed this movie made nearly every character as one-dimensional as possible, which was a bit of a disservice to those who would choose to watch it. The most intriguing thing about these characters was the fact that one did not know who the killer ultimately was until that very final scene, and yet neither did anyone know who the hero or heroes might b,e either. Everyone was simply ‘there’ and whatever it was they were going to do mattered not to the viewers. If the film had secured a better script and some worthy dialogue, the story it presented might have succeeded, and this picture would have been remembered as something other than what it is.

At the very least, the pace would pick up during the final act, and that would mean finally putting this entity to bed. While there are slashers that a person can watch multiple times, Island of Blood is not one of them. One watch is all that is needed, and for those who like the genre, it should be given at least one. After that, why torture oneself when there are so many other, much finer movies to be seen on any given day?

2 out of 5