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SAVAGE ISLAND
Produced by Michelle Czernin, steven Man, and Renee Giesse
Directed and Edited by Jeffrey Lando
Written by Kevin Mosley
Director of Photography - Geoffrey RogersSteven Harris - Steven Man
Julia Young Harris - Kristina Copeland
Keith Young - Don S. Davis
Eliah Savage - Winston Wekert
Lenny Savage - Zoran VekelicHorror flicks the likes of Jeffrey Lando's SAVAGE ISLAND don't come around often. But when they do I want to embrace them for the horrific gold that they are - twisted character-driven nightmares exploring the cruelest reality of all - the pain one man can inflict on another.
If SAVAGE ISLAND were released in 1970's, I'm sure it would be looked back upon as a shining example of the moral ambiguity that made 70's horror so vital to the genre. Contrary to today's realm of white hat good guys and black hat bad, 70's cinema celebrated that grey warzone of social separatism and touted a world where carnality was acceptable as long as the ends justified the means.
The Savage family has lived on Savage Island for generations. No real claim to the land, they secure residence through squatter's rights. The Young family, looking to turn the island into a resort, are spurned by the thought of not being able to eject their backwoods counterparts from the island. It's a notion that could throw their entire real estate development deal out the window, one that Keith Young has worked his entire life to bring about.
Neither clan are what you would consider evil. Intolerant, definitely, but not evil. Both clans place family about all else and only want to call the island they both hold dear "home."
Flawed to their cores, each clan is defined by their environments. The Savage family are the Pacific Northwest's answer to Appalachian inbreeding. Little education combined with the simply logic born from a gene pool possessing no diversity, the Savage's live off the land and see the world in an Old Testament vain - an eye for an eye.
The Young's are polar opposites - city breed through and through. The Young's place value on their lives through their accomplishments. Never content to settle for what they've achieved, each member greedily desires the next plateau's Holy Grail. This hunger for temporal fulfilment causes them to loose sight of what's good around them.
Reminiscent of THE HILLS HAVE EYES or SOUTHERN COMFORT, the clans clash. As is always the case, it's the city folk's oblivious nature to their actions that sets off a chain of violence where there can be no winners.
Caught in the middle is Steven Harris, a good man with a solid heart who comes across as weak and boring. He married into the Young family via his wife Julia, a woman who longs for the passion of romance novels but opted for the stability of decency. An outsider to both worlds, Steven must adopt the fiercest elements of each to save his family.
If Steven is the neglected protagonist, then his wife Julia is the catalyst for his arc. And Kristina Copeland's Julia is as lively and wondrous to watch as a field of butterflies on a late summer day. Even with a husband and child, she's never really grown up. She loves to flirt with the dark side only because being bad is fun and daddy won't find out. Copeland is as relaxed in Julia's skin as I am in my own. Her performance transcends acting to become something more, something real. I believed Julia and all her failings existed, and not that Kristina Copeland was playing a character. It's easy to see why she won the Best Actor category at the 2003 New York Independent Horror Festival.
I'm not sure how or why Steven and Julia ever got together. She's the kind of gal willing to pleasure her husband orally during a long drive. He's the kind of guy to turn her down because the baby's in the back seat. Deep down they love each other, but they know their marriage is on its last legs.
At its core, SAVAGE ISLAND is a movie about corruption. The corruption of Steven's innocense. The corruption of nature. The corruption of the family unit. To his credit, director Lando never bludgeons his themes over his audience's head. First and foremost he has a story to tell, a damn good one at that. Lando never tried to push the limits like so many of today's horror directors, he kept everything grounded-in-reality simple. There was never anything to distract from the characters or their story, and I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was hooked from the first moment.