Fire Island (2023): Bambi’s Revenge!

A group of friends consisting of a lesbian couple, a straight couple and a gay male who recently lost his boyfriend to suicide, venture to Fire Island for a weekend of sex, drugs and general debauchery.  Set during the pandemic, the friends try to enjoy themselves as they attempt to coax Troy out of his depression after the death of his mentally unstable boyfriend. Suddenly strange things start to happen, and one by one the friends begin to disappear.  Add an older gay couple living on the island, are recovering from the serial killings that took place a couple years before, where the killer, who is thought to be dead, may not be.  Mix in a police chief who is trying to keep this all hush hush and a strong willed detective trying to figure it all out, and an old crazy Scottish man spouting lines from Macbeth, and what do you have… a bloody freaking mess!  Normally I would end my first paragraph of a review with something like, “Who will survive the onslaught?  Watch and find out!”, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this movie.

The acting itself isn’t bad, but like a lot of modern horror films, there aren’t a whole lot of likeable characters and without someone to root for the movie is pointless.  You do feel for Troy (Connor Paolo) and his best friend Sam (Annie Fox) who are trying to make it through the isolation of the pandemic as well as dealing with the trauma of losing a friend to mental illness.  The two actors do a decent job of conveying appropriate emotion and creating a bond with the audience.  The real problem with the film is the storyline and the plot in general.  For the first 30 odd minutes nothing really happens to move the plot forward.  A couple of deaths occur, but for seemingly no reason.  Then all the sudden there is a guy dressed in a deer skull mask killing people.  The reason he is wearing that mask is never explained and why he killed the people in the beginning of the film is never elaborated on, plus the dear skull mask with antlers is getting somewhat cliched being used in several other horror films of late.  In the meantime, crazy Scottish man Murph (Timothy V Murphy) tries to warn Troy that he shouldn’t be on the island, spouting out lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  Although I found this sort of interesting, how he knew something was wrong, why he was warning Troy, or who this character actually was is never exposed to the audience.  The film was only 120 minutes long, they definitely had time to tie up some of the loose ends and add in a cohesive story.  But they didn’t. Setting the movie during the Covid-19 pandemic also seemed unnecessary, unless the reason was so they didn’t have to pay a lot of extras to make it look like a crowded Fire Island, using it as an excuse as to why the place is deserted.  Using Fire Island as a setting was a mistake, considering another movie of the same name came out in 2022, and there are other places in the world this could have been set. But maybe the worst atrocity this movie commits is the unsatisfactory end which leaves the audience with a “feel bad” vibe devoid of all hope, and of course open for a sequel.

The whole movie wasn’t bad, and I do like to call out the good things I see.  The use of sound effects as opposed to actual blood and gore is something I appreciate, and there was some interesting camera work and lighting effects that subtly added some creepiness to the film.  A shadow of antlers traveling over Troy while he is sleeping for example.  These were just few and far between and were completely overshadowed by the lack of story and a good script.