Say the words “Fantasy Island” and most people think of Hervé Villechaize screaming about a plane. That’s because the actor did just that for seven years on the hit ABC show of the same name about an island people could travel to live out their fantasies. Hence, Fantasy Island. The show, which also starred Ricardo Montalbán, ran from 1977 to 1984 and has long since been a piece of popular culture.
Fast-forward to 2020. Fantasy Island is back. But now, Blumhouse has the rights and it has the idea of living out your fantasies and filtered it through a modern lens. These days, people wouldn’t want to do nice things. They’d want to do bad things. And so, a new horror film is born. Here’s the first trailer.
Directed by Jeff Wadlow, Fantasy Island was also written by Wadlow along with Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs. It stars Lucy Hale, Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Jimmy O. Yang, Ryan Hansen, and Michael Rooker among others. And it looks...not bad?
It kind of feels like a Hostel sequel, in a way. Those movies were about rich people paying to murder random tourists, and this is also about tourists fulfilling fantasies, some of which look murderous. The difference is these people don’t exactly know what they’re getting into which is a nice little twist. It even looks like there could be some supernatural elements in there.
More than anything though, I love that Blumhouse took this familiar franchise, bought the rights, and flipped it on its head. It would be like if a company bought the rights to Stephen King’s The Green Mile and made it about an eco-friendly run.
Fantasy Island opens February 14.
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