ameivas McDowell has certainly come a long way since A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and CALIGULA. Here, he owns an island chocked with the graves of nameless souls who bit it in the Big Apple and have now turned into swarms of digital dots. The cast beats their heads frantically, but there's no getting away from the nits. Malcolm can't escape this, either. Playing a billionaire businessman, the old Brit seems rather like a loopy immigrant among a cast of Anglo blahs. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out - bring your swatters, it's an inexpensive special effects treat for anyone who keeps lizards or birds as pets. The flies are wide open on this low budget buzzer.

Johnathan B Yes, I'm a sucker for zombie movies. I bought this thinking it was a zombie movie with Mos Def and Mc Dowell, two people I thought I would never see in a zombie movie. Looks like I was right. They could have at least tried to make it suspenseful. If you need to give it a try just remember to rest your fast forward finger up first. Its going to have a workout. Here is an idea, a giant granddaddy fly whose buzzing blocks cell phone transmissions. Put the sexy chick in some beat up outfit armed with a blow torch ala Aliens, or even better, a backpack sized can of Raid rigged up for use in a way not authorized by the makers. (A Raid Bomb!) My point is, there are ways to make movies like this better, They could have dumped one of those quickly forgotten actors to pay for the cheap rubber effects I mentioned. Hey, before it explodes she could say "Fly away, Mother*%@*&$!" I'll stop know, I'm making myself sick.

Paul Andrews Island of the Dead is set on 'Hart Island' which is situated just of the coast of New York where unclaimed & unidentified bodies are buried, ex cop Melissa O'Keefe (Talisa Soto) who now works missing persons is trying to track someone down & reckon they might be buried on Hart Island so she decides to go over there. However she's picked a busy day for it as unscrupulous property developer Rupert King (Malcolm McDowell) plans to redevelop the island & build lots of apartments. He sends his man Rodger (Paul Hopkins) to take soil samples but he ends up being attacked by flies/bees/wasps or what ever they are & he ends up dead. The flies/bees/wasps then attack everyone else, wow, you can almost feel the excitement...Written & directed by Tim Southam I thought Island of the Dead was total complete & utter crap, to be blunt. The script is terrible, for a start there isn't one single reasonable explanation for these killer files/bees/wasps, not one. Thy are just there & that's it, they also seem to be intelligent a they can actually distinguish between people although it begs the question if all they wanted to do was kill the bad guy & they let the heroes go free at the end why did they kill some of the good guys to start with? Anyway, one things for sure they are more intelligent than the script, a lot more intelligent. Then there's the highly annoying character's, Soto's missing person detective just sort of walks around a bit & has a disinterested look on her face while there's plenty of clichés here as well like the ex-cons, the greedy businessman who gets his comeuppance & the good hearted cop, please give me a break. There is one laughable scene when someone wants to give his dead friend a burial even though there's a swarm of killer flies/bees/wasps buzzing around outside & he actually intends to dig the hole & put the body in it as well! When all said & done though what kills this film stone dead is the fact that it provides zero entertainment, I cannot think of one single positive aspect to this film, it's incredibly slow & boring, it's predictable & it even tries to have a moral message about the homeless & missing people which just feels so heavy handed & out of place in such a rotten film. I hate everything about this film, it's as simple & straight forward as that.Director Southam does nothing to make the film watchable, there's some highly annoying rap music & lots of irritating camera technique's which just look terrible & annoy more than impress. I'm not sure whether the things which buzz, fly & sting are flies/bees or wasps as they are never shown in close-up, all we get is a big black cloud when they attack & lots of buzzing noises. There are lots of maggots but not much in the way of gore.Technically Island of the Dead is below average, the effects don't even stretch to showing the killer flies/bees/wasps, the entire thing looks like it was set in an overcast field & as such is extremely drab & dull to look at. The acting was awful & I cannot believe an actor such as Malcolm McDowell needs money badly enough to appear in a piece of crap such as this, was it really worth it Malcolm? Well, was it?Island of the Dead is crap, there's nothing else to say really. I can't imagine anyone getting anything like entertainment out of this total waste of time, definitely one to avoid.

peter182 How can movies like these exist? Why did this script get a chance to become a movie? What were the producers thinking when they sat down and watched the final editing?: "This was a really good movie! It's so cool the way we cut off the sound at times, like when two old guys are talking in slow motion, and put in some gangsta hip hop over it instead! And people will love this idea of flies killing people for no reason at some times, and sometimes not! But hey, don't write on the back of the box that it's flies killing them, make it seem like it's zombies killing em so that we don't spoil it for the viewers! They're in for a pleasant surprise after watching about an hour without any horror and just are waiting for something horrible to come alive, that's when we release the flies!"