When East Coast homeless people die and can’t afford a funeral with all the extras (coffin, dirt, absolution) they’re buried on an uninhabited island just an autopsy away from New York. Sounds more like landfill than an island.
So this Scrooge McDuck rich guy gets the idea to buy the island, rebrand it as “Hope Island’, build a bunch of low rent slums on its bleak shores, thereby “cleaning” the streets of the Big Dirty Apple. As a PR move, it scores big with those who just want the homeless problem to go away. But the dead who live on the island think the idea sucks, so they turn themselves into cloud swarms of flies and maggots and attack the living.
Script padding includes a bleeding heart female cop trying to find corpse closure, a few expendable prisoners (they use jail guys to dig the graves, thus saving tax dollars), and an experiment to experiment on the tenants to develop some sort of space drug, no doubt for NASA, those ass hats. They even toss in a couple of angry rap songs to illustrate the plight of inner city citizens. (Like rap is even music – pffft.)
Outside of accelerated decomposition of bodies after they’re bitten by gangsta flies and gangsta maggots, Island of the Dead (2000) couldn’t be more boring. The pace is excruciatingly slow (much like the maggot’s squiggly dance of death amongst assorted entrails), and the “dead” aren’t seen ripping the heads of the living and gorging on their brains. Stick to Gilligan’s Island (1964) for some real head-ripping action.
P.S. It is my express wish in life that you do not confuse Island of the Dead with the slight variation titled Island of the Living Dead (2007). And because you need something more substantial, that one is about a group of treasure hunters surviving a shipwreck only to find themselves stuck on a deserted island that’s been overrun with nasty ass flesh-eating zombies.
P.P.S. How can an island be deserted when its overrun by zombies? Movie makers be so dumb sometimes.
Drinkin' & Drive-in 