"Where does that leave me?" Uninhabited Review

Uninhabited is text book horror, sadly it is not a debut directorial effort from Bill Bennett as it feels at times like a student production. It does nothing to redefine the genre; it has no new tricks, just tired, overused ones.

Two handsome mains Beth and Spiro (Geraldine Hakewill and Billy Milionis respectively) spend a romantic getaway on a lush small island, remote, deserted, so of course, haunted. Cliché music ramps up when things literally go bump in the 'day' as both protagonists argue over what is going on, with very weak logic from Spiro who denies everything whilst Beth gets caught up in the lore and starts to believe. The ominous signs are clearly more than kids having fun, which is why Spiro's character is so unrealistically antagonistic towards what is happening and both characters have very poor chemistry for a couple.

They both try to figure out the intention of the malevolent spirit who occasionally drops by to offer a creepy scare or two and to hang up some fish while they are sleeping, very tame stuff. They eventually find a scary shack not ten minutes away from camp and a diary, and then the Greeks arrive. In a pointless turn of events some foreigner fishermen toy with the protagonists after Beth and Spiro harass and blame them, only to get their comeuppance as the spirit 'kills' them off screen.

The wife then suddenly goes missing. In a mess of pacing her phone rings and the husband is led to the shack, where he is supposedly killed, it is all quite fuzzy at this point. There is a lot of exposition which explains the ghosts motives, to recreate its grisly history, to get a certain flavour of revenge and in a ludicrous twist, Beth, while signalling for help completes the tale by meeting the same fate the spirit did.

Uninhabited was oftentimes boring, offered no real scares, the only mouth open scenes were yawn inducing, and no satisfying conclusion. There were many paths the film could have taken to make this experience a more memorable and original one and they were hinted at but ultimately not utilised.