A group of college-age adults lands on a deserted island where they take up residence at a cabin left to one of the gang. Over the next few days they will discover they are not alone, but sharing the island with dogs. Yes, dogs. Dogs that were trained to kill, but still just dogs.
This film was put together by executive producer Wes Craven and director Nick something... the director being a long-time Craven aide, and both having been quite responsible for the catastrophe that was "Cursed". You'd think after making a horrible film about werewolves, they would try to avoid dogs or similar creatures altogether, but you would be wrong. My growing hobby of player-hating on Wes Craven is only added to with this one. And it was written by the writers of "Who is Harry Crumb?", which may be good or bad depending on how that tickles you.
The cast isn't much better. You have two brothers (played by people unfamiliar to me, but they're alright), Taryn Manning (best known for her role in Britney Spears' "Crossroads", who is supposed to be "hot" but comes off as more whiny and annoying), Michelle Rodriguez (the actress who single-handedly killed off all the fans from TV's "Lost")... and the token black guy. Token black guy who tries to seduce blonde, white girl and does every other stereotypical thing imaginable (who writes this crap?).
This film suffers from disjointed opening scenes, where the time-line makes no sense. On one hand, you have the longest afternoon in history where the gang hangs out all day in a powerfully fun montage. Then you have them meeting a boater on day two who had been attacked by dogs presumably before their arrival. So, how did the boater survive at least two days in the woods? As we see in this film, two days is an eternity with these dogs.
I'm unclear about some things, most notably an incident with the character played by Michelle Rodriguez... why can she survive a serious injury and shrug it off as if it were nothing? She should become the one dragging the team down, but only seems to be more of a leader after the fact. And what happened to Manning's character? She seems to get some sort of lust power, almost wolf-like (again, see "Cursed") but it never amounts to anything and has no importance to the plot.
The biggest problem with this film is that it's about an island of dogs. Is there really anything scary about a dog sitting in a tree? Or a dog laying on the beach? Because most of the time, that's all the dogs do -- sit and look cute.
This film went straight to video. If there was something beneath "straight to video", that's where this film would have gone. Nothing really remarkable about this film, other than its sheer stupidity. Thanks Wes Craven for letting this sort of worthless thing make it to my eyes and permeate my brain. There's a special place in hell waiting for you.
