In short: Red Island (2018)

Warning: I’m going to spoil what goes for a major plot reveal in this one right in the synopsis!

The film follows in flashback and with copious voiceovers a story John (Georgie Daburas) tells a cop after his wife Amy (Alex Essoe) disappeared on an island he took her to help save their marriage. Apparently, a miscarriage had caused a depression in Amy that put quite the strain on the marriage. Well, perhaps the fact that John’s main reaction to his wife’s suffering is to whine incessantly about how she isn’t to him like she was before has something to do with their marital troubles, too, but neither he nor the film really seem to realize that. But then, John’s lying through his teeth about his wish to save their marriage by island travel anyway, and is in fact there to steal some cursed “Indian” plaque for some Russian guy. Why he’s even taking Amy? Don’t ask me.

Of course, that cursed plaque is indeed cursed, and Amy seems to connect in some vague way to its mystical goat person guardian.

Directed and written by someone calling themselves Lux, Red Island has exactly two things going for it: Alex Essoe, one of the undervalued (otherwise she’d not have to be in this film) genre actresses right now, and a forested island setting that does indeed look like the liminal space it is supposed to be. Of course, the film does very little with it human ace card, putting a cap on Essoe’s performance by telling what should really be her character’s tale through the eyes of her – frankly about as interesting as his name and certainly also not very interestingly played – husband. Which would already be bad enough, but we get a double dose of him thanks to the unnecessary framing device, and hardly a scene goes by where poor Daburas doesn’t have to go into a pointless off-screen monologue that mostly tells a viewer nothing they haven’t already seen, or descends into flowery musings that are simply not as deep as they apparently believe to be. The cut-aways to the police interview are a great way to destroy what tension the film manages to build, something that certainly isn’t helped but that whole bit of the plot not going anywhere at all. In fact, the few pieces of information we get through them and another pointless flashback to John and the Russian would have been much better integrated into scenes between Amy and John. That might even have upgraded the pacing from leaden to slow. If ever a film needed unity of place and time, this one does. Also, a ban on off-screen babbling.


It’s a bit of a shame, really, because there is a pretty interesting, a bit Laird Barron-ish tale to be told with this island, and even from Red Island’s basic premises.