Review – Island of the Dead

If nothing else, this picture features one of the grossest horror menaces of all time: clouds of venomous flies (and the maggots they produce all over everything and everyone). And it’s the bad luck of our implausible band of protagonists (including Malcolm McDowall as a Donald-Trump-Rupert-Murdoch asshole) to be stuck with clouds of the things on Hart Island, potter’s field for the great city of New York. The production starts out on a good note with some quiet, low-key build-up. It even appears to be prepared to make some points about the callous treatment of the urban poor. But then in the last half hour or so the production goes all talky, aided by some highly inconsistent behavior by the flies. So great wind-up, but a little weak on the delivery. Mildly amusing