Hopefully, the critical acclaim that greeted Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent will see Nicolas Cage’s career turn a corner, because we never want to see the Academy Award winner in anything resembling Grand Isle ever again.
The horrendous action thriller is one of only three titles from Cage’s entire filmography to score a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but given that 1993’s Deadfall and 2014’s Left Behind are a crime drama and an apocalyptic redemption story (dis)respectively, director Stephen Campanelli’s affront to the good name of cinema is the worst-reviewed entry in an entire subgenre that almost turned Cage into a complete and utter laughing stock during his VOD wilderness years.
That’s not the reputation you’d expect for one of the most popular films on the number one streaming service on the planet, but these are indeed strange times we live in. As per FlixPatrol, Grand Isle has scored a Top 10 position on Netflix in no less than 18 countries, which in turn sees it sitting as the fifth-top movie on the platform’s global charts.
Those are 97 minutes that subscribers will never get back, and they’ll be regretting their decision once they sit through a turgid tale that sees Cage as a traumatized war veteran who entices a stranger into his ominous home to seek shelter from a hurricane. When the guest winds up charged with murder, though, he needs to reveal a litany of dark secrets revolving around the occupants in order to guarantee his safety.
Suffice to say, you will not care in the slightest, because Grand Isle isn’t even “so bad it’s good”, it’s just bad.