Anna Daniels
As Oliver tells the story, production on Fantasy Island was, in many ways, a typical Blumhouse production. It was filmed in a mere 27 days, not counting reshoots; it had a lower budget than many of the high-profile films playing at your local theater; and it’s a straight-up weird and risky project. Starring Portia Doubleday, Lucy Hale, Ryan Hansen, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Michael Peña, Michael Rooker, Austin Stowell, and Jimmy O. Yang, Fantasy Island is an adaptation of a half-remembered television show from the ’70s. Structurally, it’s like four films crammed into one, and it doesn’t truly lean into its horror side until the final act.
Plus, the shoot didn’t go according to plan at all. In fact, that’s how Oliver got involved. “I was brought on very late in the process, basically when they’d just started shooting, because the original director of photography wasn’t able to continue on the project,” he detailed. Oliver had worked with Blumhouse many times before — he was the cinematographer on Blumhouse films like Get Out and the two Happy Death Day movies, and supervised reshoots on others — so when trouble hit, the studio got him on the phone.
Because of the tight schedule, Oliver had to hit the ground running. “It was a case of… picking up the reigns and figuring out what Jeff [Wadlow] really wanted and figuring out what they’d done so far, and then sort of powering through and getting the job done,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that it was the easiest thing in the world… but actually it was a really great crew and Jeff’s an amazing director.”
In addition, the budget and schedule allowed the crew to travel to Fiji, which stood in for Fantasy Island‘s tropical paradise, but meant that the whole shoot had to take place there, including work that would normally be done on sound stages. The problem? Fiji doesn’t have any. “If you were shooting with a big budget and you’re shooting in LA or Atlanta and you had a giant stage, you’d just build [all the sets] and it’s all easy,” Oliver explained. “But in Fiji, there’s real challenges with the space and what’s available there.”
As a result, the Fantasy Island crew was forced to build complex sets, like the caves that host the film’s climactic chase sequence, in small warehouses with extremely low ceilings that left little room for the camera to move around. Oliver and his team were forced to improvise, cobbling together new camera rigs and hoping that everything would work out.
For the most part, it did. Fantasy Island hasn’t received great reviews, but there’s no denying that it’s an unconventional film guided by singular vision. Besides, with a $22 million opening weekend, it’s already earned back its $7 million budget and then some, making it a financial hit even if it’s not a critical one. In other words? For better or worse, Fantasy Island is a Blumhouse movie through and through.
Fantasy Island is in theaters now.
Written by: Looper
