Imagine you are in desperate need for a relaxing holiday. Life has dealt you a rough hand lately and you decide to go somewhere exotic where you can heal. The holiday resort offers you an exclusive day trip to a local island to get away from everything and experience one of nature's wonders. That island is one of the only places on the planet where there are a certain mix of minerals in the rock that have a unique effect. (Can you guess what happens based on the title?).
I hadn’t heard much about this film but saw it on the Netflix chart and I usually enjoy a good thriller so decided to give it a go. It follows a group comprised of different families who have all booked in to the same holiday resort and go on a day trip to a local (and exclusive island). When there, they notice something happening to the children. They are changing. The parents take their eyes of their kids for a while and when they return, their kids have grown by years; to the point they are barely recognisable. The adults seem to be unchanged but then they realise it’s because as an adult, years don’t have as dramatic an effect as with children.
Naturally, they try to find ways to escape the island but every time they climb the mountains, they black out, when they go into the cave, they black out, when they try to swim in the open water, they black out. Time is rapidly running out and they have to try and find a way off of the island within twenty four hours.
This film explores some interesting topics about the effects of aging. We realise how much changes in childhood years as opposed to adult years. We get to see how cancer progresses (there is a point where they have to remove a tumour but struggle to do so because the skin keeps healing). We also see how the changes in the human body affect your behaviours.
What I found most interesting was that going into the film, I assumed they would find a way to get off the island but about two thirds of the way through, I came to the conclusion they may not. One by one, the characters were dying and in a normal stranded story, there would be time and that was something that these characters did not have. Perhaps the point of the story was witnessing one batch of people go through this horrible situation of dying on the island and seeing how there was no way out.
Luckily I was wrong and there was a kind of happy ending. It was great that the kids (brother and sister) managed to escape at a decent age (in their forties or fifties I think) despite being so young mentally. It was interesting to see how they dealt with the obstacles of their mental age and managed to mature so much in such a short space of time. They managed to shut down the operation to stop it happening to other people.
There were a lot of questions that remained unanswered about why that island causes such rapid aging or that time moves quicker and why the coral allows immunity from it. However, I think in a way it works. It’s one of nature's mysteries and it stays that way. What we do get to find out is why this operation exists and it is to create cures. They only take people to the island who are ill and before they go, they are given a ‘tea’ which has some kind of medication related to the illness they have. They are then observed from a distance allowing the ‘scientists’ to see the effects of the drugs. One thing they solve with one dose of a drug is stopping seizures for the equivalent of ten years. It’s an interesting concept to take people who are dying and use them effectively as lab rats but for the greater good. It makes for a more interesting narrative than when in thrillers people are hunted for sport or something.
It was a decent film and considering it’s all pretty much in one location, time doesn’t go too slowly for the viewer. It doesn’t have a lasting impact though and I wouldn’t say it was a true thriller. There were some horror elements thrown into it (brittle bones caused some ugly contortion) and those felt slightly disingenuous. It felt like an attempt to ramp up the intensity of the film, otherwise it would get stale.
My Rating - 5/10
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