Island of Doom: A Dusty Relic for the Patient Viewer

Is it worth the watch?

Honestly, only if you're the type who finds comfort in the scratchy audio and stiff blocking of early cinema. If you need a movie to keep you awake, skip this. It’s for the folks who like digging through film archives on a Sunday afternoon when the internet is down.

Vladimir Kryuger is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Sometimes he looks like he’s really in the moment, other times he’s clearly just waiting for the cue to walk through a door. It’s kind of endearing in a weird, lopsided way. 🎥

The dialogue is… well, it’s certainly written. There are long stretches where you can practically hear the script pages turning. The way they talk feels like they’re reciting poetry in a library where they’re afraid of getting shushed.

Compared to the punchier, tighter pacing you’d find in something like The Narrow Path, this thing just drags its feet. It’s got that specific kind of stubbornness that old dramas have. It just refuses to get to the point.

Oddly specific observations

• There is a chair in the corner of the main room that nobody sits in, but they all look at it like it’s a character.
• The lighting in the second act makes everyone look like they have neon green shadows. Probably a restoration quirk, but it’s distracting.
• Pyotr Sobolevsky’s coat is at least three sizes too big. It moves independently of his body.

There’s a scene about halfway through where the tension is *supposed* to be sky-high. Instead, it’s mostly just people standing in a line staring at the floor. It goes on for so long that I started counting the cracks in the wall. 🕰️

It’s not quite as bleak as The Golem, but it shares that same heavy, suffocating atmosphere. You feel the weight of the film trying to be 'serious' and 'artistic.' It mostly succeeds at being very, very tired.

If you're a completist for this era, you’ll find some scraps here to chew on. If you’re a normal person, you might wonder why you started this at all. It’s an odd, jagged little film that doesn't really want to be liked by anyone in particular.