Islands (2023) Film Review: Treading Rocky Waters

Islands’ subtextual ideas are much more interesting than its characters, but the messy script fails to realize any of these themes in new ways.

But while this repetitive storytelling initially serves to establish Tom as a character whose life has gone off-track, it ultimately becomes a glaring flaw of the film that persists and prevents it from ever developing in a meaningful way.

Islands follows Tom as his daily life as a tennis coach on Fuerteventura is uprooted by the arrival of a middle-class British family looking to expand their horizons. Tom quickly builds a rapport with Anne (Stacy Martin, of The Brutalist) and her son Anton (Dylan Torrell), but the arrival of patriarch Dave (Jack Farthing, of The Lost Daughter) soon throws a spanner in the works. Tom finds himself sucked into their dysfunctional holiday, showing them around the island and taking them away from the tourist traps that are so clearly above them. But things quickly turn sour when Dave goes missing after a heated argument with his wife, leaving Tom responsible for binding the family together and finding his new ‘friend’.

The first act of Islands is very strong, and it’s here where much of the storytelling is at its peak. The way that writers Blaz Kutin and Lawrie Doran (alongside Gerster) manage to paint such an effective portrait of this protagonist is really impressive, and it doesn’t take long for audiences to fully understand Tom’s ambitions and motivations. The supporting characters enter the story in a way that feels natural and engaging, and the on-screen dynamic between these four actors really sells their budding friendship. In particular, Sam Riley does a great job of slowly building rapport with the others in a way that anybody who’s ever made friends on holiday will relate to.

The main problem with Islands’ first half is that it doesn’t always feel purposeful. We’re left watching the same scenarios over and over again, as Tom gives his tennis lessons in the day and descends into self-loathing at night, but it takes a long time for anything to really “happen” in the way you’d expect from a drama like this. And when that inciting incident does ultimately arrive in the form of Dave’s disappearance, not only does it come much too late, but it also derails the entire film. Islands seems to be too ambitious for its own good, placing subplots and thematic ideas on top of each other until the whole thing comes tumbling down and brings the rest of the story down with it.

While it’s not fair to say that Islands simply changes genres halfway through, there’s a very distinct sense that its second half has a very different meaning to its first. This is where the film makes its themes known after coasting along on exposition and cast chemistry for almost an hour, but it doesn’t introduce these themes in a way that feels natural or necessary. Ideas of parenthood, self-perception, and paternity are explored through a handful of sporadic lines throughout the screenplay, but the film decides instead to sideline these concepts for a more traditional procedural mystery. Islands clearly wants to be something deeper and more highbrow than it is, and it lacks the courage to follow through on the seeds it plants to get there. The film’s most interesting ideas are merely subtextual, when they should’ve been the focus of the narrative instead of a half-baked missing persons story.

Islands is a very easy watch thanks to Sam Riley’s charismatic lead performance and the gorgeous visuals that help immerse audiences in these coastal landscapes, but it’s also a frustrating one that feels like it’s holding itself back. The story constantly foreshadows things that never actually happen but are merely teased as being true, and that’s not enough when the rest of the narrative is so cut-and-dry. It’s not sufficient to hint towards the characters’ mysterious backstories, writing all the clues off as subtext for the audience to dissect at their own will, while focusing instead on a much less interesting mystery that quickly loses momentum.

Islands premiered at the Berlin Film Festival on February 16, 2025. Read our Berlin Film Festival reviews and our list of 20 films to watch at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival!