Four friends who look like models take a trip to a remote Hawaiian island to check out a shuttered resort where spooky, unnatural things happened years ago. Apparently, the place is haunted by the vengeful ghost of a native girl whose face was mutilated back then. Will anyone survive to write a TripAdvisor review?
This inane horror movie is so ludicrously cliche-ridden one starts to wonder if it’s not some kind of sophisticated meta-joke being played on us. How else can we account for choices such as having the whole thing told as a flashback from a hospital bed, by sole survivor Lex (Bianca Haase)? Is it some kind of nudge in the proverbial ribs that, as we see the quartet strip off to swim near a waterfall, we hear Lex intone solemnly that this was the last time they were happy? (Spoiler: because everyone is going to die.) And was writer-director-producer Taylor Chien hoping to use this as a calling card to get a gig making episodes of Love Island? Or did he and his friends just fancy a holiday in Hawaii?
Whatever the answers to these and other questions may be, there’s no doubting that this film was more fun to make than it is to watch, although there is a sort of guilty pleasure in the spectacle of ruins and decay and wondering whether the film-makers actually found a real abandoned resort, or if it’s all a set.
• The Resort is released on 30 April on digital platforms.
