USA, 2006
Review:
JA Kerswell
Not to be confused with the Josh Duhamel and Melissa George thriller made the same year, PARADISE LOST is an entertainingly breezy slasher romp that was little seen until it appeared on Tubi a few years ago. Eight buff contestants, including a few soon-to-be stars, arrive on a tropical island for a new reality TV show. However, they eventually discover a killer lurks hidden amongst the cast or crew. Unlike other slashers of the time, the film is blessed with old-school nudity and practical gore effects - and is clearly intended as a tribute to 80s slasher classics. It is also, perhaps, the lone slasher movie to feature a lesbian Final Girl. The story of the making of the film is just as hair-raising as the on-screen action.
Paradise Lost is the name of a new Survivor-meets-Love-Island style reality show, which is masterminded by the cantankerous and sarcastic Milton (Sam Jones) (a clever nod to the famous 17th-century poem by John Milton). Ahead of the rest of the crew due the next day, he is joined by his assistant Rebecca (Maxine Bahns), a cameraman Jay (Mark Hawkins) and director Ken (Hoyt Richards). The show’s contestants - including future 90210 revival star Trevor Donovan (as Troy) and future THE VAMPIRE DIARIES star Dawn Olivieri (as Victoria) - turn up and start mugging, preening and pouting for the camera in a bid to win the $500,000 prize money.
Whilst the contestants hang out in their swimwear on the beach and flirt with each other, Rebecca starts to suspect that Milton is hiding something after she spies him locking papers away in his desk. The show’s host Danny (an amusing and self-deprecating turn by director Kyle Schickner) has a tantrum about conditions on the island; before Milton slaps him down in front of the crew. Danny continues to moan about having to use communal showers, but his complaints are cut short when someone looms from the jungle darkness and cuts his throat with a machete.
The next morning the rest of the crew do not arrive as scheduled - along with the shoot’s food. Milton is insistent that the contestants do not find out and instructs Jay to continue shooting them for B-roll. However, when they discover that Danny is missing and one of the contestants insists she saw a body in the surf, Rebecca’s gut feeling something is wrong grows stronger. As more people start to disappear, she uncovers that Milton may have purposefully recruited some unstable contestants to give his show an edge. He tells her: “You don’t really think those people on The Surreal Life passed their psych evaluation tests do you? Janice Dickinson?” However, when she discovers that someone is really making a show called ‘Reality Massacre it becomes a fight to survive and unmask the killer before everyone’ is eliminated - all the while looking good in swimwear …
PARADISE LOST is obviously a part pastiche on reality TV shows that purport to put contestants in danger - but the conceit is here they really are in danger from a mad killer. Writer/director Kyle Schickner’s background in comedy is evident with a witty script that never falls into outright spoof territory. Milton gets the best lines, with such stingers as: “I couldn’t sleep. I was too upset over what’s her name?”. It obviously isn’t taking itself too seriously, but largely plays the slasher action straight. A standout in the film are the practical gore effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe (who had already made a name for himself on movies such as CANDYMAN (1992), HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS (1995) and WISHMASTER (1997)). It’s an obvious tribute to the kind of over-the-top bloodletting found in the splashier early 80s slasher movies. Another potential tribute (perhaps to JUST BEFORE DAWN (1981)) is the remarkable climactic fight between the film’s Final Girl and the killer - where she uses a severed head to beat them to death.
Another similarity, less seen in its contemporaries, is a smattering of nudity mostly from the female cast. There are also a number of soft-core sex scenes and it feels it has more in common with a movie such as BIKINI ISLAND (1991) than other slasher movies that were coming out at the time. This reaches a climax - so to speak - when three naked, writhing bodies are electrocuted when the killer drops a hair dryer onto the floor of a wet shower stall.
PARADISE LOST was filmed on hi-def video in the Dominican Republic in 2006 - with the location mirroring as the remote tropical island where the reality TV show takes place. Director Kyle Schickner was kind enough to talk to me about the making of the film; his love of 80s slashers and the challenges that came from filming abroad. Not least of all having to be guarded by the country’s army to prevent local police from attempting to shake them down for money. He also details an emergency airlift, collapsing actors, voracious insects and the surprising input of actress Kate Siegle - now wife and often performer for genre behemoth Mike Flanagan. He also addresses the delay between filming and the film’s eventual streaming release and his ideas for a sequel.
Read the exclusive interview with Kyle Schickner about the making of PARADISE LOST.
BODY COUNT 12:
Female 4 / Male 8
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