Devil's Island (2021)

_**Ya gotta be tough**_

A young woman (Kat Alexandra, aka Elle Alexander) inherits a small island in the Thousand Islands region of northern New York after her grandparents were found murdered there three years earlier. It becomes quite clear that some people don’t want her there. Will she survive? Kristjan Sokoli plays a yokel while Cliff Yates is on hand as the sheriff.

“Devil’s Island” (2021) is a slow-burn mystery Indie with a bit o’ suspense and horrific thrills, but it’s not a gory horror movie. It’s basically a micro-budget rendering of “The Wicker Man” (1973/2006) switched to the Saint Lawrence River in upstate New York with a very different conclusion. The curvy, petite protagonist is attractive and the paradisal locations are enjoyable with the movie playing almost like a travelogue, but viewers who need an explosion every 10 minutes or buckets of blood will likely find it mundane and tedious.

The flick respects the viewer’s intelligence to connect the dots based on the glaring clues without spelling it out. It’s simple as pie, but I don’t want to spoil it for viewers. The theme revolves around overcoming fear, using your intelligence & available resources in response to grave challenges and standing your ground. Just listen to the lyrics of the song as the credits roll.

If you like movies like “The Wicker Man” and “The Shuttered Room” (1967) and don’t mind the quirky approach of low-budget Indies, give it a try. There’s nothing wrong with the technical filmmaking; the acting, lighting, sound, cinematography, music and stunts/effects are all fine.

The film is short-and-sweet at 1 hour, 12 minutes, and was shot at Thousand Islands, New York, in the Saint Lawrence River that emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario.

GRADE: B-/C+

When Sheriff "Thompson" (Cliff Yates) visits a remote New York State island home, he discovers that the occupants have died. Three years later, their grand-daughter "Sam" (Elaine Alexander) decamps from her Las Vegas home to this windy and chilly house where she seems quite intent on living a solitary life. Well, luckily for us watching, it's not quite as dull a paint drying - but it's not a great deal more animated. The first twenty minutes recycle themselves a bit too frequently - lots of nice pottering around the lakes, the stormy weather, the wildlife - just no Sir David Attenborough to augment with some detail. Things do get a touch more interesting though when she espies a boat that seems to be spying on her? A peeing Tom? A disgruntled neighbour thinks the sheriff. She knows nobody though so whom could she have annoyed? "Michael" (Kristjan Sokoli) is one of her few contacts locally, but he has an habit of appearing to "check in" unannounced so might he be the suspect? Is he up to something? As we proceed this supposedly idyllic environment develops into a home for creeps and weirdos that would make better for the set of an Hammer movie. The denouement is rushed, incomplete and the whole thing seems like it's missing about twenty minutes of plot/character development and a fair slew of context for this increasingly unfulfilling scenario. It's an attempt at an horror mystery that falls flat at just about every juncture and really isn't much worth watching, sorry.