My thoughts exactly!!!!!
***SPOILERS***
I could almost see the writers hanging out, raving about an idea one of them just had:
"Hey dude, what about you're on holiday on some bizarre s*** hole island and by accident you kill somebody of the locals; you get arrested and sentenced to death in some Kafkaesque prison but they can clone you and kill a copy of you instead and you're free to go." --- "Whoa dude, we gotta make a movie, c'mon!"
....but what arey the going to do with that idea once the bloody execution is over and you are still alive and back in your resort?
That's exactly where they ran out of any ideas whatsoever. How is the story supposed to end? In the movie, after it has turned out he has been played by his resort acquaintances the whole time somehow, he decides not to leave the island after all but to stay in the resort, lying alone on the beach in the rain - THE END.
Like dude, WTF?
Up to the execution, Cronenberg manages to create a really tense and immensely unsettling atmosphere of being far away from your safe home country in a sinister, oppressive, almost hostile country on an island in a luxury resort somewhere on this planet, protected by barbed wire, not allowed to leave the premises.
I love vacation horror movies, where the main characters are in some corners of the globe where totally different and often archaic laws apply, where you don't speak or read the language and you suddenly get caught in a nightmarish police and justice system after something (by accident or negligence) happens.
This should be a 30-minute short film that ends with the main character coming back to the hotel room, greeted by his wife but just somehow staring blankly at her. You don't know if this is still him or maybe in fact the copy, leaving open the question if something has indeed changed in his mind or consciousness after having been cloned. That would be my version of this brilliant premise!
reply
share