Horror movies don't necessarily have to have a lot to be entertaining....A great script, a budget and good actors are a bonus, but a decent horror movie can make do with a creepy atmosphere, some good scares and a fast-moving plot...."Pulau Hantu" (Ghost Island) commits a cardinal sin....It's just BORING.
The first thirty minutes is shot and edited like a music video, which is not cool, just annoying...Eight rich Indonesian teenagers end up on a resort island by themselves along with two resort workers who cook and watch over the place.
Of course the island is haunted (the title literally translates as "Haunted Island", after all) and people start dying (albeit pretty late in the film)....There's some nonsense about a little girl who disappeared and a doll that keeps moving around, and the "twist" comes too late and is fairly predictable. The film seems to consist mostly of the characters calling each other's names out loud and the ghost constantly grabbing people and letting them go like a Scooby Doo cartoon....It's as if they made up the script as they went along...
The film is never quite sure what kind of film it wants to be....There aren't enough scares to make it a "scary movie" (the ghost, a ripoff of Sadako from "RINGU" just keeps popping up again and again...and again and again...). The characters aren't funny or particularly interesting enough to make it an engaging comedy or drama.
All in all, it's a boring film. You look at your watch an awful lot in 88 minute running time. 1/10
