An idyllic island paradise, abound in glorious sunlight and azure waters… it sounds like the perfect place to receive psychological treatment. But in the case of young-adult sci-fi flick Paradise Hills, it proves to be hell on earth for the young women forced to take up occupancy.

According to the world depicted in Paradise Hills, there is nothing more threatening to society than a free-thinking woman. It is so scary in-fact, that young women are dispatched by their affluent families to a Mediterranean-esque ‘centre of emotional healing,’ run by a beguiling Milla Jovovich and her subservient and mostly silent male staff, so they may be ‘reformed’ into decorous women.

While everything seems perfect on the island, the manicured landscapes and decorative food being every influencer’s holiday #goals, something nefarious lingers beneath the beautiful surface.

The latest ‘patient’ enlisted to the island is Uma (Emma Roberts); a rebellious young woman pressured by her family to marry into a wealthy household – an act that Uma rejects. Uma’s longing for independence, being able to marry a man of lower social stratification who she loves, is considered an illness by a society that expects women to be obedient and ornamental. Uma remains defiant, if not dead, and leads an escape from the island with a fellow group of women who are seen as imperfect by their families: their exiling because of mental illness, queerness, and being zaftig in appearance.

Paradise Hills uses the constructs of science fiction as a metaphor for female oppression; applying fantastical elements to highlight the harmful societal expectations placed on women.

Director Alice Waddington allows striking visuals to denote this societal pressure. The first time feature filmmaker constructs a hyper-stylised beautiful-nightmare which brings out the horrors of female submission through iridescent lighting, pastel colour schemes, and avant-garde clothing: ranging from Victorian-era finery to delicate bedwear constructed out of tulle and chiffon.

Waddington succeeds in creating a compelling narrative throughline via production design, yet neglects to give a profound treatment to the script. The conspicuously written dialogue (by screenwriters Nacho Vigalondo (Colossal) and Brian DeLeeuw (Daniel Isn’t Real)), told with petulant grit, finds Paradise Hills bear greater semblance to a work on The CW Network than a feature film. The acting becomes impacted as a result of cliché writing, with the talented cast – including Roberts, Jovovich, Awkwafina, Danielle Macdonald and Eiza González – forced into overbearing performances.

Horror elements that occur towards the tail end of Paradise Hills prove under-whelming; lacking the pizazz needed to viscerally convey the message of oppression baked into the film.

The past decade has seen the rise and fall of the young-adult parable, with adaptations of Twilight, Hunger Games, and to some degree the Divergent films (RIP part 4), finding their audiences. Paradise Hills, not based on IP, comes LONG after the popularity of this genre and tries to spin some sci-fi originality into an overly trodden theme of youth free-will.

Undeniably, there are some interesting (and important) aspects captured in Paradise Hills’ wondrous production design, but unfortunately not enough is done by Waddington to keep contrived dialogue – synonymous with the worst of recent YA films – at bay from this island.

Share: