#island zero

Horror movies based in each state in the United States

Part 19: Maine

Carrie 1976

Darkness Falls 2003

Gerald’s Game 2017

Island Zero 2018

IT 1990

Lake Placid 1999

Pet Sematary 1988

The Dark Half 1993

The Prophecy 1979

Island Zero (2017) | Josh Gerritsen

“Just..Spoilers.  The elderly couple survives.

And what a delightful couple we have to view.  Reviewer Sarah Budd of HORROR SCREAMS VIDEO VAULT said,  ‘ really well acted by all involved but the absolute best characters are the elderly couple Ruth and Alvis who are by far the most entertaining’

In a film less than 2 hours long it boggles the mind how the cast shows depth and background. Now, I think all the characters are just wonderful, but in interactions, most of the people are so believable you want to smack them or stuff the number of your therapist down their collar. Imagine how infuriating your hometown would be if things got bad and monsters were coming...yeah, hold on to those cans of beans, folks. And maybe some spare sticks of TNT...

Ruth and Alvis are a long-lived, long-married couple--old-timers on a salty little island in the middle of utter nowhere, forty miles off the coast of Maine.  Ruth and Alvis are the folks you want to root for, especially since our first sight of them is not really on a positive note...

After the opening scene where something unseen kills a marine biologist (the mother of the child in the above shot) some 4 years in the past, the film snaps forward to a quietly thumping heartbeat under a stethoscope.  An old woman’s voice complains over this soft sound; this is Ruth, sitting in the back of the consult room and doing all the talking for herself and her husband Alvis while Doc Maggie tries to get some answers on Alvis. 

 Alvis is tall, getting stout about the middle, and white-bearded.  He keeps his head down and does no volunteering while Ruth explains:

Alvis has inexplicably shut down, barely moving about and gaining weight. His equally-elderly (76 years) wife Ruth is explaining it all with her frustrations leaking out of every pore: He won’t do anything. This close to Christmas it is almost impossible to not think, “Oh, holiday depression?”  He sure does seem depressed...shut down...minimalizing.

There’s another reason why Ruth is upset at Alvis; he’s keeping the house cranked up to 82-degrees F (that’s ~28-Celcius) and if you think that isn’t heatstroke worthy you are not a New Englander because those folks are tough as Okies and French Canadians).  You know that joke about the town in Maine that never used a scrap of salt or sand on their roads for 20 years because ‘they might really need it someday?’ Yeah.  That’s the culture. You say ‘blizzard’ and they say ‘spring break’.  Your average Mainelander can do just fine at 65-degrees F (or 18.3C) because they know they have to pay for every thermal unit out of pocket.  This is an island where the heat must be harvested from local firewood, or gleaned from washed-up sea coal, or brought over in drums of Diesel by the ferry or a friendly fisherman.

Ruth continues on, making it hard for Dr. Maggie to get information on her patient.  She had to split half a cord of firewood all by herself.  (FYI many houses use wood and another source of heat to get by for emergencies, so what she said is not unusual). 

For rule-of-thumb, Ruth has split enough wood to keep 1 or 2 rooms warm for a brief time.  

Her voice is strident and tearful; a tiny woman at her wits’ end.  Doc Maggie asks repeatedly for Ruth to step outside so she can talk to Alvis privately.  Ruth doesn’t understand.  Alvis isn’t helping; he is in a fugue state until she asks Alvis if there was anything he couldn’t say better than herself.  Alvis rouses enough to say, “Nope!”

But in all of this, Alvis only speaks when forced.  Getting to the doctor was clearly not his idea but he isn’t going to fuss with her over it.  It is all Ruth’s motivation and energy.  Finally, Doc Maggie runs out of steam and asks what Ruth wants her to do.  Ruth finally blurts out, “fix him!”

We see Ruth again later on...the ferry has failed to show; people are trapped on the island with no new fuel for the fishing boats or heating and lighting the houses.  Food supplies are dwindling.  Ruth stands in line at the only store and scowls at Lars, who has cleared all the beans off the shelves.  She tells him to leave some for others but Lars is an opportunist and refuses.  One of the island mothers asks the shoppers if anyone can spare a can of milk for her kids.  Ruth scolds Lars to no effect, then yanks a spare can of milk out of his basket for the mom.  There’s a scuffle but the only injury is from Sam, the biologist.  Getting between two elderly islanders is never good for anyone’s health.

Things are pretty bad.  Fishermen’s boats are found without the fishermen, and pools of blood and strange blue goop that we later learn is blood from an unknown species of cold-water creature.  No radio.  No VHF, no phone, no cable, no internet, no satellite no nothing.  

Ruth and Alvis show up again after half the film passes; by then we learn that this undiscovered species, an apex predator, is hunting the fishermen who leave the island. Tucker Island is effectively cut off from the world.  It’s horrible but everyone who is left on the island is relieved to know what’s going on.  OK, now we have something to work with!  Fantastic!  Surely help will come, right?  We’ll just stay off the water. Great! 

Then Ruth and Alvis’ neighbor Nina is found, a gnawed-up skeleton on dry land in her own house and Sam thinks of the old couple.  Something has knocked over their plastic Santa Claus; there’s a smear of Nina’s blood on the front door.  He slips in and walks through an admirably tidy and clean house...to find them both alive.

Alvis is sound asleep on the couch wrapped in what looks like a million blankets and throws, snoring away in a boiling hot house while Ruth reads a book.  He and Ruth have no idea their neighbor was just butchered a few feet from their house, and that whatever did it tried to come in but didn’t move past the front door.

“Are you ok?”

“Alvis ain’t up to speed, but, I’m ok.”

So everyone on the island is moved to the inn where they can theoretically all be safe together (ok fine, but it sounded better than being alone, right?)  We see Ruth sitting on the stairs with her arm around the young waitress who lost her old beau Emmett--one of the first fishermen to go missing.  She’s clearly not doing great.  Alvis is glued by the fireplace with the same knit afghan he was sleeping under in his house.

We do learn that of the four people on the island who own firearms, Ruth and Alvis are half of them.  Ouch. Ruth knows Arthur (another eaten fisherman) used to hunt and thanks to her more ammo is found in his house.

The next time we see Alvis, he has a front row seat to a monster attack. 

The sea creatures rip Val in two.  It happens so quickly and no one can see it moving at all; there’s a lot of screaming and in-shock reactions. But Alvis actually speaks up.

“They’ll...be back.”

Doc Maggie asks him for more information (after they recover their wits) and Alvis slowly explains that he hasn’t seen them before, but...he’s seen what they can do.  

We learn from his halting, trembling words that Alvis is the sole survivor of a 13-crew freighter ship Dundee 30 years ago.  First the dolphin vanished, then one by one, members of the crew.  Bill.  Jake.  On the third night... Alvis almost chokes on the words about to come.  The third time he tries, the words finally escape.  He was working in the engine room when he heard gunfire.  He laughs mirthlessly at how he thought pirates were attacking. He came up to see that everyone he knew was dead, slaughtered, and he couldn’t explain to the Navy what he even witnessed.  In the background we hear his memory of the Navy chopper, a heavy weight pressing down on his health and sanity.  There is no wonder he doubted himself; what little he saw didn’t make sense and had no frame of reference to a seasoned seamen from an fishing island.

“Just...on deck.  A shimmer. Like...TV static...shimmering...”

“The Navy asked me what had happened....I couldn’t tell ‘em...!

‘...it was thirty years ago...”

So much about Alvis is made clear now.  There is a strong suspicion that the timing of the past attack was at this time of year--Alvis’ depressive funk is not typical for him, or Ruth would have said something (we know she doesn’t hold back).

Alvis and Ruth are delightfully well-suited.  One suspects she was the driving force holding them together and keeping them both motivated when Alvis struggled.

The situation suddenly gets worse.  One of their group is a spy for said Navy and he has killed a young islander--barely out of girlhood--to bait the monsters.  Ruth is all for shooting him if he doesn’t answer their questions.  When someone protests, Ruth says, “I’m okay with this.  You, Alvis?”

“Got nooo problem.”

Do not play higher moral grounds with old Mainelanders. 

Rather than get his jewels shot off, the spy explains that the island is ground zero for the projected invasion of this intelligent, hunting, amphibious creature that doesn’t show up on sonar or radar or heat-seeking machines, nor is it visible to other forms of tech.  He is supposed to be the diplomat to open negotiations and--way to go for victim blaming--he says everything is ruined because Doc Maggie shot one of them (because they were tearing Val apart, picky, picky) and he needs to try to negotiate with them. Hence why he slaughtered Jessie, a waitress who had a crush on him.  He murdered her and left her out as a peace offering to the creatures, who mutilated her sad remains.  So.  This is negotiating, eh?

Cue Ruth’s reaction and the best damn line in the whole movie:

“You are...negotiatin’...with FISH!”

And it just gets worse; the Navy has decades of information on these things and are determined to use their elusive qualities for the war department.  The whole island is a sacrifice zone for these goals where they expect the creatures to wipe out everyone on Tucker Island (thus getting rid of any witnesses). As a huge mass of these things crawl to the house, the spy yells to be let go, to let him negotiate.

Ruth is not pleased. 

“Only negotiatin’ is gunna be with this heah shotgun!”

Things actually get worse when the spy persuades them to let him talk to the monsters.  It doesn’t take long to realize his ‘negotiations’ are more in the form of, ‘eat them, not me’.

Everyone else flees to the attic, but Alvis is frozen in trauma.  Ruth screams at him to come but he can’t move.  It’s horrible.

In the attic the survivors can only hear screaming.

Ruth sinks to a trunk, shotgun in her lap, stunned.  She is the picture of abject misery...

...until something wet and slimy splats on her hand.

Ruth doesn’t hesitate.  Her head snaps up to the ceiling and she fires.

[INSERT GROSS MONSTER DEATH]

Seriously, that thing is nasty.  I’m quite pleased that we don’t see a lot of it. I am GLAD they have a special ability to bend light and make them almost impossible to see.  I mean, look at what we can see of them.  Ack.  Clearly, this was designed by somebody who had frequent nightmares about glass eels mating with cephalopods.

Not that Ruth cares.  While everyone else is trying to recover from all this she weeps for Alvis...

Who is (despite all logic) alive and well. The creatures backed off.

The reunion is so adorable.  “DAMN OLD FOOL!  I THOUGHT I’D LOST YOU!” (more crying and huggin)

The Navy Spy, however...well, Alvis points to the various places the man is...er...residing...throughout the house when Sam asks where he is.  When Lucy asks why Alvis was still alive, Ruth suggests he was too tough.  

But no, he was too hot.

Doc Maggie figures it out!  The creatures are cold-blooded and cannot stand heat.  They never touched him on the ship because he had been in the hot engine room; they didn’t enter their house because the thermostat was cranked!  

When the others wonder what the repellent temper could be, Ruth pipes up, ‘82 degrees’...the temperature he keeps in their house.

Alvis is a changed man after this.  He is still taciturn; but he knows at long last what happened on his ship.  He knows why he is the survivor now, shedding an eternity of fear and guilt. That tiny scrap of information from his story lets the survivors set a trap, a last-ditch shot so they can get off the island before the Navy comes and finishes the job the creatures started.

Of course, there’s always one last snarl, but...The end of the film is hopeful.  The old couple and child are being rowed to safety and Doc Maggie, a veteran of two wars who has kept herself in lean fighting shape, means it when she says she can row the whole 40 miles to the mainland.  She means it. 

Science fiction needs no ‘reason’. Just science fiction.

Smart Sci-Fi.  Low-budget, shoestring, pray-the-weather-gods-don’t-hate-us-too-much project.

Written by Tess Gerritsen--a fantastically gifted Chinese-American authorix and directed by her son.

Want to know something cool?? Most female authors gender-neutral their names for professional reasons.  Not Tess.  She was originally Terry but changed it to Tess so there would be no doubt.  All hail your backbones, Tess Gerritsen.

Women matter here.

Kids matter.

Scarred veterans of war matter.

The constant struggles for harmony in blended households matter.

THE SCIENCE MATTERS.  THIS IS THE ONE AND ONLY TIME I CAN ACCEPT THE EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THERE’S AN APEX PREDATOR OUT THERE THAT NOBODY KNEW ABOUT.  PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR.

Maine Islander snark.  Oh, my GOD the snark.  It is the snarkiest snarkety snark, even when the island is burning down around one’s ears and people are being eaten right and left you just cannot stop a Mainelander from cutting your legs out from under you with five words or less--or in the case of the Elderly Character Actress Who Survives, two flippin’ words.

Soundtrack does nothing to make you feel good about what’s coming because, forget that false platitudes shit.

The Base Under Siege trope is often overdone, but not here.  These are regular people who are just simply living from day to day, depending on fishing and an outsourced fuel supply to get by.  Then without warning--no ferry.  No way to leave the island except under their own power.  And that’s when things really start to happen. 

Grief and sorrow colors the lives of the islanders.  There is trauma for the loved ones lost in the past; livelihoods are sacrificed to fate.  In some people it made them stronger and more powerful.  In other people it created irreparable chasms that threaten their survival.  Gerritsen’s medical career sings in the role of the locum tenum, a weary doctor who has very little sense of self left in the ashes of her military career until the enemy comes to her door.

Said character actress (Anabel Graetz) didn’t start ‘acting’ until late in life because her parents didn’t want her to...and with her firey personality and interesting face she suddenly was able to pay off her debts for the first time, ever.  

If you catch the Youtube version, there is Cute Little Animal Death in the opening scene, but after the uproar, they listened and went back to the island and redid the whole shebang first scene, so a human dies instead and moves the plot forward.  This was expensive but the right thing to do and the authorix wrote an awesome piece about it.  Go watch this version as it is the official one now.

Lol I’m actually on time with this post! 

4th movie of the month was: Island Zero

I gave the movie 4/10. The concept could have been good, but there were so many plot holes, the acting was pretty bad, and the effects were even worse. I had trouble not pausing the movie and watching something else. Pretty forgettable movie, and I don’t really recommend, unless you’re utterly bored and trying to find anything to help pass the time.   https://www.imdb.com/list/ls040538201/