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Fantasy Island (Wadlow 2019)
In a bizarre meta twist, the film Fantasy Island reflects the fantasies of the island: at first it is everything you ever wanted, but soon you end up in a mess you didn’t expect. It is a fun watch, but at watch price? As with the ancient people of Easter Island, the film attempts to over-harvest itself and doesn’t know how to resolve the resulting decline until it ends up dying. Never fear, we have an extensive discussion of how the film could have easily been improved! This is something we really try to do for films that end up being disappointing. What sort of constructive criticism can we offer for how to have done better.
SPOILERS IN THIS EPISODE
Fantasy Island (Wadlow 2019)
TOPIC INDEX – Fantasy Island (Wadlow 2019) (times are approximate)
0:35 – Introductions
3:35 – Discussion begins
4:00 – A long history of “be careful what you wish for” narratives
5:20 – Character recap
6:00 – Excellent opportunities misspent on superficial morality lessons
9:12 – Elena’s (Gwen??) second fantasy
12:52 – The other fantasies
19:21 – A brief digression to revisit Come to Daddy and Black Christmas
20:58 – Back to Fantasy Island and the ending with Melanie
22:00 – Rewriting the ending
26:52 – Doing too many things poorly instead of a few very well
28:33 – Compared to sporting events, Chuck E. Cheese, and social media.
32:21 – Back to the film
33:59 – Laura takes her viewing experience meta
38:32 – How meta can we take this?
44:10 – Grading the film
Related Episodes
Pet Sematary (Kolsch and Widmyer 2019)
The Perfection (Shepard 2019)
Black Christmas (Takal 2019)
The Twilight Zone, s1e1, “The Comedian” (Harris 2019)
Recommendations for other films
Truth or Dare (Wadlow 2019)
Credits
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“Horror films are our collective nightmares.”
Episode 55