An interesting film directed by Tim Southam in which a small island known to be the burying place for indigents from New York City becomes the setting of some bizarre deaths as well as some political machinations of a Donald Trump-like billionaire who has bought the island and plans on creating housing for the homeless. The characters involved with first landing on the island and then discovering this weird killing force are a female policewoman who is looking for a nameless dead child, forgotten to everyone except her, a prisoner who is innocent of a crime but is doing his time by burying people on the island in mass graves, and a man with gobs of money who has bought the island for seemingly altruistic reasons but in reality has purely selfish goals. The other people on the island die mysteriously with what turns out to be a thinking mass of flies that kills quickly and strips bodies of their flesh and speeds up the decay process twenty-fold. The film suffers from some budgetary concerns as the flies are hardly impressive to see or view. The script also get somewhat trite near the end with little creative tinkering with a situation seen before in other films.That all withstanding, this was quite an unexpected treasure to see. I sat down thinking I was about to watch some special effect laden film about the rotting dead prancing about, but instead I found the film to be very interesting, claustrophobic, decently acted, and even philosophical. Sure there are some things over-done like the girls playing in the streets and the oddly misplaced rap music, but those are small complaints. I am not saying the film is great in any way, but it is a thinking horror film that depends on mood and setting and suggestion rather than what can easily be viewed. Malcom McDowell does an outstanding job in his businessman role. He just oozes with nastiness when he wants to. Talisa Soto also does a rather good job as a cop. Don't brush the film off too quickly nor pay to much mind to the negative reviews. Certainly if you were expecting a film with mindless rotting corpses coming after you with the promise of lots of blood and guts and got a movie with some thought-provoking material you would be disappointed too?
