What happens when you make a cheap indie horror film with what could a decent premise at a gorgeous location but then seemingly forgot to add almost any of the horror aspects, you get Taylor Chien’s film The Resort.
We follow four college students who take a trip to Hawaii for Lex’s birthday to chase down an abandoned resort which is infamous for hauntings as a form of inspirations for Lexs’ upcoming horror novel. After watching a YouTube video explaining the back story of the resort, which honestly is the best part of the movie as this fake clip is done quite well, we watch our friends act as if nothing bad would ever happen as they stumble through the wilderness to reach it.
At just around a 70 minute run time the film for sure takes its time getting ready to go, leaving almost everything for the final few minutes of the film. They do set up the film as being all flashbacks where clearly Lex is the only one who made it, but they do a cliché with that as well which is another thing that I won’t even bother going into. So much of the film is just spent doing nothing though, they go around the island doing things not related to any spooky, then explore the resort in broad daylight making jokes that don’t hit and having bland conversations.
Once we finally reach the point where events start to unfold they tend to do so in such a quick fashion and in ways that from the start just make zero sense. For example we are supposedly on a remote empty island that is forbidden to be on where not even a plane would drop them close, yet there is a car security unit there. Once we finally see our ghost, who I may add does have decent effects, the amount of powers she seemingly has range from moving objects, doing normal paranormal type activities, and also making someone a zombie it seems. Just nothing here seems to make much sense.
Overall The Resort falls through in every way. With awful characters, poor writing, volcanic size plot holes, and even some horrible editing in both the visuals and sound there just isn’t really anything here for someone to go after.
Score : 2/10
