I haven’t watched a good horror movie for a while and sadly by the time this film ended, I still hadn’t. Here’s my The Resort (2021) review.
Four friends head to Hawaii to investigate reports of a haunting at an abandoned resort in hopes of finding the infamous Half-Faced Girl. When they arrive, they soon learn you should be careful what you wish for.
From writer/director Taylor Chein comes The Resort, a film that is marketed as a ghost story but certainly feels more of a broader spectacle by the time the credits roll.
I had seen numerous mixed reviews of The Resort before watching the film and some were harsh, to say the least.
After viewing the trailer I thought the story seemed intriguing, the cinematography certainly looked good enough to view with some shots in particular being of very high quality indeed.
Whilst the acting and characters seemed very copy and paste within the genre, I was still interested in watching it.
Whilst these copy and paste characters don’t deliver anything in the way of emotional investment with their audience they serve as mere lambs to the slaughter in this particular piece.
With the story bouncing between the events on the island and a hospital bed where one survivor tells the aftermath story to a police detective, it does seem a little jumbled at times.
Bouncing back and forth between past and present is certainly an annoying way to tell a story, especially one as surface-level as the one that The Resort is adamant about telling.
Leisurely strolling through its 70-minute runtime we have the comedy relief in the form of Sam (Michael Vlamis), the muscle-bound protector in the shape of Chris (Brock O’Hurn) and our two female leads in Bianca Haase and Michelle Randolph.
It’s only during the final 20 minutes of the movie that The Resort starts to emote a real classic horror vibe with some wonderful special effects that instantly gave me Hellraiser vibes.
What it lacks in writing, acting and more The Resort certainly isn’t as bad as many critics have made it out to be.
It’s certainly not the worst horror movie you will ever see and the wonderful camera work at certain scenes really drag you in.
But when a movie has 20 minutes of salvation out of an already shortened runtime of 70 minutes, it’s certainly not a great film by any means.
Our entire plot is told within a YouTube video at the start of the film as the group are told about the spirit of The Half-Faced Girl, a woman who was murdered in a nearby village that haunted the resort after her passing.
That’s all you really need to know about The Resort.
There’s no real chilling moments or any sort of suspense, everything just seems to lazily pass by without any real impact or effect.
It’s when the spirit starts to pick off the group one by one does the film grip tightly and not relent for those solid 20 minutes.
It’s a real shame that many audiences won’t have the patience to get that far into the film to appreciate that section but it is what it is.
Before you know it another horror movie with a questionable ending rears its ugly head.
Whilst The Resort is worth enduring for those 20 minutes alone it’s one particular resort that I won’t be returning to in a hurry.
The Resort review by Sean Evans
The Resort is available on Sky Store, Virgin, iTunes, Amazon, Microsoft Store, Google Play, and Chili: http://watchtheresortmovie.com/
Our Rating
Summary
With an already shortened runtime, The Resort just isn’t able to keep me hooked, it’s certainly more of an enduring than enjoyable experience and 20 minutes of superb special effects sadly don’t make up for the 50 minutes of lazy filmmaking that encapsulates it.
