Fear Island

The movie starts with Haylie Duff running through the woods. I almost called her the less talented of the Duff sisters, but that's not saying much. Plus, I think she was on “Seventh Heaven” and I devoured that shit back in the day. Even though it looks like there is nothing around for miles, a bunch of cops suddenly descend on her. She gets drug back to a police station, where a cop gets nasty with her. Apparently, she has no memory of what happened and he has a bunch of dead bodies on hand. When Jenna (Duff) flips out, she has a flashback to what happened.

Jenna is dancer (yeah right) who is going to Julliard in a few weeks (yeah right). She and her friends just want to visit a lakehouse cabin on an insland in the middle of nowhere for a long weekend. Jenna, Kyle, Tyler, and Ashley just want to have some fun. Then there's Mark. He and Jenna recently broke up and he sees the weekend as his chance to win her back. Once they get there, they find a stowaway on board. Megan is cute and she seems to know way too much about their little group, but they don't find her odd at all and let her stay with them.

They randomly find a dead body on the beach, which is the guy who drove them to the island. Ashley freaks out because her little dog goes missing, and when she finds it in the hot tub, the killer drowns her. After way too much time spent running through the woods, chasing each other, and a guy getting his foot caught in a bear trap, we finally get to what happened...kind of.

It turns out that Tyler invited a dorky girl, Regina, to a party on the island. He got her super drunk, his brother Kyle picked on her, and then Tyler had sex with her. When she tried to leave, he wanted another go around. They fought and she slammed her head into the nightstand. He convinced his brother to help him bury her on the island. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to go back and party on an island where I buried a girl.

The group decide to dig up Regina's body, but Megan refuses to go. As she rightly explains, why would she join them when she didn't do anything? Of course when they dig up the grave, they find Kyle's dead body inside. Then Tyler winds up dead, from a snakebite of all things and the guy who drove the boat shows up again.

I guess the movie forgets that he died because he's perfectly fine. Keith (he totally has a name) kidnaps Jenna and admits that he saw his brothers bury Regina. He flashes back to her crying on the grave with dirt on her face. I assumed that she clawed her way out of the ground, but since the movie never explains, maybe he just imagined it. Mark grabs him, they go over the ledge on the second floor and Mark dies. Damn, I actually kind of liked him.

Keith chased Jenna through the woods, she got caught in a trap, and Megan saved her life. Happy ending, right? Not a chance. Megan and Jenna talk about their families and Megan pulls a knife on Jenna. She admits that Regina was her older sister and she's only there for revenge. The movie jumps back to the present day and Jenna breaks down crying about her poor life and how she killed Megan in self-defense. A psychiatrist takes her into a private room so she can cry some more.

Jenna's parents arrive, see the photo of her, and get all confused. Uh-oh, that woman is tots not their daughter. Turns out that the Duffster is actually Megan. She pretended to be Jenna to get the cops on her side. Oh and Keith was never actually dead, he actually helped her plan the whole weekend. Jenna/Megan takes off for parts unknown, revealing that she was the killer all along.

Um, excuse me? I like the twist ending, but this is kind of insane. Why the fuck is she killing people who had nothing to do with her sister's death. Tyler and Kyle are totally guilty, but Ashley, Mark, and Jenna didn't do anything wrong. If having an asshole as a friend makes you a bad person and worthy of murder, I'm totally screwed.

Do I Know You From Somewhere?

There's the whole Duff connection, but there's also Aaron Ashmore (aka Jimmy Olsen from “Smallville”) playing Mark. Also, Lucy Hale plays Megan. I know her from a guest role on “How I Met Your Mother” and “Pretty Little Liars,” but she's also been in a ton of television movies.

Best Death?

Eh, I don't know. “Fear Island” was a made-for-TV flick, so they couldn't show too much. There was one girl drowned in a hot tub, but it's more along the lines of someone thrashing around in a puddle of water and then found later. BTW, every source says this is made-for-TV, but they do get away with the f-bomb.