After years of hiatus, Vietnamese Le Binh Giang returned with two films this year, “Rock-a-bye Baby”, which seems like a continuation of the excellent “KFC” he directed back in 2016, and “Jackpot Island”, a commercial flick that was promoted as the sequel to “Kumanthong”, a movie Le Binh Giang directed along Ham Tran and Phan Gia Nhat Linh. Unfortunately, this is also the worst work of his we have seen so far, essentially ripping off Hollywood cheap horror movies.
The movie begins in the past, with the story of Huynh, a shaman who turned out to be member of Kumanthong, a dark fanatical sect, and his relationship with deafmute village girl Soi, which ended up with a ritual named fetus sacrification. Years later, a group of young friends, couple Tam and Linh, Kim, a girl who also seems to have something going on with Tam, blonde-haired Long who seems to have feelings for Linh and two influencers, Cuong Mushroom head and Ha, his girlfriend. As the tensions between the members of the group rise, the past events that took place in the island eventually reach them also with dire consequences.
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“Jackpot Island” is a mixed bag of a movie, to say the least. For starters, when it focuses on the events of the past, which take the smaller portion of the narrative though, the result is entertaining, with the combination of true story, ritualistic horror and grotesqueness working quite well for the movie. The same applies to the visuals, with the desaturated, dark and occasionally red hues working quite well, and DP Trang Cong Minh capturing the whole thing in the best fashion.
However, when the movie moves beyond the past and into the present, the issues begin quite intensely. For starters, the characters are paper-thin, making it very difficult to empathize with any of them, and their relationships straight out of a teen movie, in the most cliched fashion. The connection with the past, the comments about the naivety of generation Z and the impact social media have on people nowadays do not go anywhere. Furthermore, when crime is introduced in the story, the narrative becomes even worse, particularly in the way the story unfolds, with almost all events presented seeming particularly forced in order to check all ticks of popular cinema. At some point, the past arc joins the present in a way, but by then, it is already too late and the whole thing has lost any kind of interest it could have.
Expectedly, “Jackpot Island” also suffers from the acting, both due to the performances and the characterization. The only ones who are somewhat saved are Tieu Vy as Kim, particularly in the moments she turns scary, and Trang Nghia as Long whose constant ‘offense mode' is one of the most appealing qualities of the movie. Sam as Linh and Tran Phong as Tam are quite pleasant to the eye but not much more than that, while Minh Du as Cuong is just annoying.
Lastly, the SFX do not work almost at all in this arc, with the tripping on drugs sequence bordering on the amateurish.
Le Binh Giang proved with his previous titles that he work wonders even with a small budget, but unfortunately, in the case of “Jackpot Island” it seems that the clutches (issues if you prefer) of commercial cinema caught him in the worst way, resulting in a movie that is difficult to watch for the majority of its duration.
