Perhaps the director wanted a holiday in
HAWAII or to audition for a gig making episodes of Love Island
![The Resort review – inane horror film or a sophisticated meta-joke?](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/196d6e08b155fe8014560956f0ffc591026f0944/340_47_1143_686/master/1143.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTEucG5n&enable=upscale&s=d105af35b2ad55e7e8c7c41f45c94d72)
Four
Friends who look like models take a trip to a remote Hawaiian island to check out a shuttered resort where spooky, unnatural things happened years ago. Apparently, the place is haunted by the vengeful ghost of a native girl whose face was mutilated back then. Will anyone survive to write a TripAdvisor review?
This inane horror movie is so ludicrously cliche-ridden one starts to wonder if it’s not some kind of sophisticated meta-joke being played on us. How else can we account for choices such as having the whole thing told as a flashback from a hospital bed, by sole survivor Lex (Bianca Haase)? Is it some kind of nudge in the proverbial ribs that, as we see the quartet strip off to swim near a waterfall, we hear Lex intone solemnly that this was the last time they were happy? (Spoiler: because everyone is going to die.) And was writer-director-producer Taylor Chien hoping to use this as a calling card to get a gig making episodes of Love Island? Or did he and his friends just fancy a holiday in Hawaii?