An average movie

After almost 20 years, Sam Raimi was finally coming up with something original and I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it definitely had some potential. Basically, they took ‘The Blue Lagoon’ concept and gave it a dark edge with some black humor which did sound really fun. On top of that, I always had a weak spot with movies dealing with survival in some rough environment and the damned thing was sometimes pretty wild with Raimi behind the wheel. And, yet, to be honest, I wasn’t completely sold after all. I think it had to do with the fact that the concept was actually too slight after all. The whole idea was to have some effective but mousy employee stuck in a deserted island with her douchebag boss and, while it might sound great on paper, it turned out to be too limited or limiting after all. I mean, the dynamic became clear from the start, Linda had always dreamed of facing such a challenge so she would take care of things but Bradley was an arrogant dominant spoiled brat and they would regularly clash. Unfortunately, this dynamic was obvious within the first moment that Bradley woke up on this island and they basically kept repeating and rewinding this conflict until the end which was, at least for me, not really satisfying. It did escalate and Raimi really went wild, that’s for sure, but it all felt rather predictable. Another issue was that Linda and Bradley were both not really interesting as characters. I won’t blame Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien who were both some perfect choices to play these characters, they had to carry the whole thing on their own and they both really nailed it. To be honest, I thought it was rather weird though that, when they were back at the office, they successfully managed to tone down McAdams’s beauty and charisma but, suddenly, when she got stranded on this deserted island, she became quite gorgeous again which didn’t make much sense to me. Eventually, it turned out to be a B feature with a blockbuster budget but not really much more than that. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Sam Raimi’s work. 

6/10