Look at the title and tell me you expected this to be good... go on, I'll wait... yeah, that's what I thought.

During Cinco de Mayo a group of University students head-off to a remote island for a weekend of partying, sex, and to take part in a scavenger hunt that has one boy and one girl handcuffed together to collect as many pairs of underwear as they can to win twenty-grand for charity. Already we're starting to shake our heads at the stereotypical (and dumb) characters and the loud soundtrack of second-rate punk music. But then things start to get mildly, and I mean "mildly", interesting as one of the couples finds a demon-looking statue and decide to break it open.

Little do they know (but we do as the opening introduction told us), but said statue contains the evil from an ancient tribe that was trapped in the piñata shell and floated away so the village could again prosper. And, of course, if the statue is even cracked open the evil will reawaken and start to kill people.

As fast as you can say, "Boy, is this retarded!" the cast starts to drop like flies and at least the movie gets to the deaths quickly as more than half the cast has been killed-off before the halfway point. And it's during this first half you actually think to yourself it might be an enjoyable mindless B-movie as there's a whole lot of decent gore effects (the best being a "swing by" decapitation) - but soon that feeling passes as once the cast is thinned out it becomes rather dull going which isn't a good thing because it gives you a chance to focus on the poorly done CGI monster.

In fact the biggest problem with the movie is its monster. Originally filmed using just an actor in a rubber suit, directors David and Scott Hillenbrand deemed the movie "not scary enough" and went back and replaced most of the monster attacks with low-grade CGI. The cheapness of it is abundantly clear when the Piñata is chasing some jeeps or when it transforms into a flying tadpole-like form. Plus they've also added a "Piñata Vision" that's really just a cheap rip-off of the heat-vision in Predator and have made all the deaths have the monster moving in a jittery way (while blurring the action) and that eventually becomes quite annoying.

If you're looking for a cheap, silly, and not too great slasher/monster movie then maybe Piñata: Survival Island is for you - chances are you'll do what I should've done and don't bother with it.

Creature effects are partly credited to the Chiodo brothers (creators of the Critters and makers of Killer Klowns From Outer Space), but judging from the DVD footage only their animatronic head design survived the effects "upgrade". (Chris Hartley, 4/17/05)

Directed By: David Hillenbrand, Scott Hillenbrand.
Written By: David Hillenbrand, Scott Hillenbrand.

Starring: Nicholas Brendon, Jaime Pressly, Eugene Byrd, Kasey Fallo.

aka: Demon Island.