Producers: Jason Blum, Marc Toberoff and Jeff Wadlow   Director: Jeff Wadlow   Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow, Chris Roach and Jillian Jacobs   Cast: Michael Peña, Maggie Q, Lucy Hale, Austin Stowell, Jimmy O. Yang, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, Parisa Fitz-Henley and Michael Rooker   Distributor: Sony Entertainment/Columbia Pictures

Grade:  F

The original ABC TV series of “Fantasy Island,” which ran from 1978 to 1984, might have been a pretty horrible program, but it wasn’t a genuine horror.  That’s what producer Jason Blum and writer-director Jeff Wadlow, who previously collaborated on the awful “Truth or Dare,” have made of it—a horror movie that’s genuinely horrible, its stupidity being exceeded only by its dullness.

In a move that recalls ABC’s attempted 1998 reboot of the original, which bombed of course, Wadlow and his co-writers have ratcheted up the supernatural elements of the premise while emphasizing their potentially fatal consequences.  The fantasies here turn out to be more nightmarish than satisfying as they collide and replace ostensible hopefulness into what emerges as nothing more than a contrived revenge plot, complete with zombie-like villains.

The picture begins with Julia (Parisa Fitz-Henley and her boss, the mysterious Mr. Roarke (colorless Michael Peña), welcoming their five new guests, who have each won trips to the purported paradise.  Brothers JD (Ryan Hansen, obnoxious in Dax Shepard mode) and Brax (goofy Jimmy O. Yang), who want the “time of their lives;” Patrick (stolid Austin Stowell), who wants to play soldier to honor his dead soldier dad; Melanie (Lucy Hale), a hottie who, in turns out, fantasizes about humiliating Sloane (Portia Doubleday), the mean girl  from her past; and Gwen (subdued Maggie Q), a reserved woman still grieving her failure to accept the marriage proposal offered by Rocklin (Robbie Jones) years before.

The fantasies—which, Roarke warns them, will have to follow the “natural course” determined by the island to their ends—begin, but they quickly grow awry and begin to intersect in weird ways.  Other figures intrude on the action, among them a grizzled guy in the forest (Michael Rooker) who shows up when characters get into trouble and a character called Devil Face (Kim Coates), who leads a squad of masked gunmen.  Even Patrick’s dead father shows up.

As things grow more and more complicated, the movie becomes decidedly chaotic, and it takes more attention than the material deserves to keep things straight, especially since the script is constantly tossing in contrived plot curveballs, which in the last act culminate in a series of revelations and resolutions so absurd that they leave the movie a complete mess.  Along the way, there are a few gross moments (like a “Hostel” reminiscence early on), but generally the picture moseys along surprisingly pokily, overstaying its welcome by clocking in at nearly two full hours.       

You have to give a certain degree of credit, though, to the behind-the-camera craftsmen (save for Wadlow, of course, whose direction is pedestrian).  Marc Fisichella’s production design has some elegance, and cinematographer Toby Oliver provides glossy widescreen images; and one feels sorry for editor Scott Albertson, who tries desperately to give shape and coherence to the constantly shifting storylines, even  if he doesn’t always succeed.  Bear McCreary’s score, though, bangs away mercilessly.

As usual nowadays, the movie concludes with the suggestion of forthcoming sequels (along with an especially lame “reveal”).  By the close of the movie though, you’ll definitely be inclined to agree with the survivor who acidly remarks that she just wants to get off this damned “Island.”

Grade: F

Anyone walking unawares into this fifth installment of Michael Bay’s mindlessly bombastic franchise based on the Hasbro toy line might think that he’d stumbled into a screening of Guy Ritchie’s bomb “King Arthur” by mistake. That could be cause for alarm, except that in the end even that summer stinker was a more pleasurable viewing experience than “Transformers: The Last Knight.” Megatrash as only Bay can make it, this represents some of the most inane drivel ever to (dis)grace the screen—and an obscene waste of money to boot. (The turkey cost more than $200 million, not counting marketing expenses.)

The Arthurian prologue, as it turns out, explains how the Transformers first got involved with humans on earth. It seems that boozy Merlin (Stanley Tucci, wearing a beard that he probably hopes will obscure his identity) convinces a Transformer to give him a powerful staff; it mutates into a fire-breathing dragon that turns the tide of a fifth-century battle Arthur (Liam Garrigan) and his men are waging against a huge barbarian horde. Their victory leads to the creation of the round table and the burial of the staff with Merlin far below ground. The staff becomes the script’s MacGuffin, the all-powerful thingy that everybody is out to possess—including the Quintesson queen (Gemma Chan), who needs it to fulfill her plan to restore Cybertron by destroying earth; she abducts and brainwashes Optimus Prime (voiced again by Peter Cullen) to serve in that effort.

The queen’s plan rouses Sir Edmund Burton (Anthony Hopkins, chewing the scenery with relish while reciting his lines at breakneck speed, presumably to camouflage the stream of nonsense he’s saying), the last representative of a secret society that’s been hobnobbing with the Transformers since the fifth century. He forcibly recruits the two people who can save the planet from calamity. One is our old friend from the previous movie, Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg, looking craggier this time around, perhaps as a result of understandable exhaustion), who has taken refuge in a huge junkyard with some of the Autobots—including Bumblebee (Erik Aadahl) and Hound (John Goodman)—being hunted by a new anti-Transformer military force. He is said to represent the “knightly” virtues necessary (as far as one can tell from the chaotic final battle)—to wield Excalibur. The other is snooty Oxford professor Vivian Wembley (Laura Haddock, herself abruptly morphing from prune-faced feminist skeptic to high-flying heroine, as well as romantic interest for Yeager), who—Burton reveals—is the only living descendent of Arthur and thus, the sole person able to unleash the staff’s power.

It would be almost impossible to explain everything that happens subsequently in the script by Art Macum, Matt Holloway and Ken Nolan, because frankly it’s an incomprehensible farrago of numbingly stupid, haphazardly connected excuses for more metal-crushing action. The theft of a submarine museum is involved, which leads to a visit to Merlin’s underground (or is it undersea?) mausoleum. Agent Seymour Simmons (a manic John Turturro) reappears; he discovers an old manuscript associated with Arthur and Merlin. There are scenes of Optimus, who keeps announcing portentously “I Am Optimus Prime,” as though he’s having trouble remembering his name) being tortured by Queenie. His nemesis Megatron (Frank Welker) turns up on occasion, as when he negotiates with Transformer-hunter Lennox (blandly handsome Josh Duhamel) for the release of his nefarious comrades, but he’s a pretty negligible character this time around. Much is made of a talisman given to Cade by a dying Autobot, which apparently identifies him as “The Last Knight.” There are also new characters linked to him—a comic relief figure named Jimmy (Jerrod Carmichael), whose frantic asides offer no relief at all (one of the unhappy facts about the script is that all the jokes are incredibly lame and references like Optimus’ regurgitation of Churchill’s “finest hour” speech borderline offensive), and a spunky little orphan named Izabella (Isabela Moner), who’s terribly annoying. At one point a battle occurs at Stonehenge, the site of which is somehow related to the Arthurian business, and though Chicago escapes destruction this time around (we only see existing rubble there), that ancient circular monument does not.

Mention of the Stonehenge sequence brings up the variable quality of the visual effects, since one long shot of the site represents so bad a modeling job that it looks as though it might have come out of a Lego box. Otherwise CGI is continuously slathered over everything with such abandon that it makes it nearly impossible to judge Jonathan Sela’s cinematography, which is further handicapped by the need to cater to the IMAX 3D format and by the editing credited to (though “blamed on” would be more accurate) Mark Sanger, Roger Barton, John Refoua and Adam Gerstel, which seems based on the notion that unless things move frantically even in dialogue scenes, the audience’s attention will wander beyond recapture. As usual, Steve Jablonsky’s score is ear-splitting but unmemorable.

At one point in “Knight” Burton tells Yeager that the fundamental question they have to answer is why the Transformers return to earth again and again. The answer is obvious: because their pictures keep making big bucks. It’s time to eliminate that excuse. Moviegoers of the world, unite! Do to the Transformers what you did to the Ninja Turtles last year! Stop them in their tracks! Just say no!

Of course, then the postscript added at the close of the credits here—involving a mysterious hooded lady in a desert, a scene clearly designed to prepare the way for a sixth installment—would be rendered moot. Unlike the Transformers, that would be a real boon to humanity.