Studio: Vertical Entertainment
Director: Taylor Chien
Writer: Taylor Chien
Producer: Will Meldmen, Sam Mobley, Justin Chien, Taylor Chien
Stars: Bianca Haase, Brock O’Hurn, Michael Vlamis, Michelle Randolph, Dave Sheridan
Review Score:
Summary:
Four friends encounter supernatural terror when they investigate a haunted hotel on a small Hawaiian island.
Review:
Lately, I’ve been giving some thought to how long I’m going to continue doing this, with “this” being reviewing horror films that are too often bad or mediocre. I’m not burnt out yet. I’m merely unable to picture myself decades from now as a 70-year-old man still writing about DTV Amityville drivel. At some point, I’ll “retire,” and I’m curious what’s going to motivate me to finally move on.
I imagine the straw destined to break my camel’s back might look a lot like “The Resort,” a movie so aggressively pointless it causes me to question how much better my time could be spent doing literally anything else. If you forced a bot to watch 100 of the blandest indie horror movies imaginable, then asked the bot to generate a generic horror movie of its own, that film would also look a lot like “The Resort.”
Making mistakes right off the bat, the movie starts with a lifeless sequence where two security guards poke around the titular building for two minutes before one of them gets dragged into darkness. After a “bwaaawm!” drowns out your yawn, the film stays framed as a flashback where a woman in a hospital bed tells a disbelieving detective her story. Someday, fledgling filmmakers will learn to not suck all suspense out of a setup by opening on an ending unless a Christopher Nolan-esque twist requires such tactics. Today is not that day.
For a book she is writing, Lex has been looking into ‘The Half-Faced Girl,’ a half-assed legend about a murdered girl who haunted a hotel so much, the entire resort simply shut down and abandoned the building, because who cares about salvaging a multimillion dollar business once a ghost gets involved, amirite? As a birthday gift, Lex’s three friends are treating her to a trip to the remote island to visit the cursed resort firsthand. I’d identify them by name except with characters this razor thin, they’re best remembered as Instagram blonde, Jason Momoa stand-in, and stereotypically uncouth douche.
Following 15 minutes of talking about their trip, the four friends spend three more minutes taking a helicopter ride to the island. Anxious to brutally murder more time, the next item on everyone’s itinerary is eight minutes of slow ambling while talking about nothing particularly important. While one couple converses in the foreground, the other pairing kibitzes in the background. Overlapping dialogue from both interactions wages an audio war, making for a din of dithering discourse that’s as poorly recorded as it is wholly uninteresting.
With the trailer in need of some hot shots for increasing sales appeal, the group takes a break to swim beneath a picturesque waterfall. The camera makes sure to tilt down to Lex’s breasts when she peels off her top, and to the blonde’s thong when she takes off her shorts. Momoa man also gets to show off his gym-fit physique while douche dude goes fully nude.
Over the next ten or so minutes of meandering, a ghost seemingly appears in the distance, but turns out to be a sheet tied to a tree. Everyone eventually makes it to the resort for ten more minutes of aimlessly walking around, searching for nothing specific and finding nothing eerier than a broken mirror.
In one of the wraparound pieces where she speaks to the detective, Lex recounts, “We hadn’t seen anything yet.” Neither has the audience, Lex. Neither has the audience. We’re nearly an hour into a movie that only runs 70 minutes without credits and we quite literally haven’t seen a single thing that can be considered scary, let alone remotely memorable.
The last stretch from third base to home plate kicks up a little dirt by way of a car crash, a hokey face-ripping, and white-eyed demonic possession, finally putting up a minimal amount of effort even though the effects are cheesier than a party size bag of Doritos. None of what happens makes a shred of sense, although that comes as no surprise considering the story, which is the B-movie equivalent of “this could have been an email,” is criminally light on substance to begin with.
The credits list three times as many actors as actually appear onscreen. Since the four friends are alone in that scene, who is ‘Waterfall Guy’ supposed to be? Is there also footage on the editing room floor where Lex gives her rent check to whoever ‘Landlord Randy’ is? It’s impossible to believe the nonexistent Car Buyer, Book Store Ghost, Mrs. Kendall, and Ride Share Driver could have somehow saved this movie. But it would seem someone stripped down “The Resort” to the barest bones possible, yet revealed how boringly bleached the skeleton is in the process.
The only reason I can come up with for why “The Resort” even exists is that someone wanted an excuse to take a trip to Hawaii. That only explains why it was made though, not why someone would want to watch it. That’s a question with no reasonable answer at all. Just like the question of why I’d allow this time vampire to drain me dry of energy when clipping my toenails offers infinitely more entertainment.
Review Score: 25
Everyone else who has no problem with a fright flick that feels like “Lizzie McGuire” decided to get dark with a PG-13 Halloween special should do just fine.