SAVAGE ISLAND tells a familiarly creepy story. A struggling couple, with a new baby, Julia (Kristina Copeland) and Steven (Steven Man) are traveling to see Julia’s parents at their home on Savage Island. Tensions are high, and knowing they’re going to see Julia’s family in a place so remote is raising the stakes. Things are made weirder and more tense when they run into two islanders on the way to the ferry, and they realize Savage Island may be appropriately named — these two are the dictionary example for “hillbilly”. Julia and Steven brace themselves for a long weekend and head to the ferry. 

Julia’s brother, Peter (Brendan Beiser) picks them up at the ferry, and is showing off his usual juvenile tricks and jokes on the ride home when he decides it would be fun to drive down the long dark road without his headlights on. In his irresponsibility and recklessness, he hits what he thinks is a deer on the dark road. Steven and Peter get out of the car but don’t see anything, and decide instead of looking to just carry on home. The problem is, they didn’t hit a deer, and what they did hit will come to haunt them within a matter of hours.

SAVAGE ISLAND was produced in 2003, and boy does it reek of it. Upon further research, it seems the movie was shot on video, which is mistake number one. The quality of the film (video) itself is extremely, painfully dated, and combined with bad sound issues and a lot of painful ADR, it’s hard to even get through the technical issues to see the movie for what it is. The cinematography, which I assume was done in a style to exude erratic, panicky, off kilter emotions, instead just gives off Blair Witch shaky camera vibes… and not in a good way. More annoying than thematic, which is a comment I could make about several parts of this film.

The story itself has some classic creeps – hillbilly, backwoods creepiness is always welcome. However, there is too much distraction from that core story, a weird foray into Julia and Steven’s sexual dysfunction, Julia’s panic disorder, whatever-the-hell Peter’s deal is… they’re all fully distracting from the actual horror of the story, and once the horror comes into play it’s too heavy handed to really land.

To top it all off, SAVAGE ISLAND has a lazy and lackluster ending, which we come to abruptly – one almost gets the feeling a few script pages were lost along the way. The performances are okay, some even approaching good, but the characters themselves are just so pathetic and whiny that it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. It’s unfortunate, also, to see Don S. Davis so wasted in the role of Julia’s father (although he goes out with gusto). SAVAGE ISLAND falls into some major traps that prevent greatness. It’s not without merit, but the mediocre filmmaking combined with a poorly constructed ending definitely left me wondering… why did I just watch that?

3/10 stars 

Savage Island is available from Bayview Entertainment