THE ISLAND Trailer (2024) Matt Dillon

THE ISLAND Trailer (2024) Matt Dillon

First movie trailer for The Island starring Matt Dillon.
Signature Entertainment

"What do I have to do to get you to notice me?" 🇬🇷 Signature Ent. in the UK has revealed the official trailer for an indie film titled The Island, which is actually a Spanish production made by a Spanish filmmaker set on a Greek island, though all the dialogue is in English. No need for any subtitles this time. This romantic thriller film also goes under the title Haunted Heart, but it's being released on VOD as The Island in the UK (not to be confused with Michael Bay's The Island or Shaun Paul Piccinino's The Island from before). When Alex joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant, sexual tensions rise as she falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max. Blinded by her feelings for him, the relationship slowly drifts into a harrowing tale of survival. Starring Matt Dillon, Juan Pablo Urrego, and Aida Folch. It was shot in the remote Greek town of Trikeri, if anyone's interested. This trailer starts out so sweet & nice, then gets super intense by the end. Is he a hitman? Or a mob enforcer? Seems like he's the cliche someone with a dangerous past, for sure.

Here's the official UK trailer (+ two posters) for Fernando Trueba's The Island, direct from YouTube:

And here's the US trailer for Fernando Trueba's film Haunted Heart (the US title) also on YouTube:

The Island Poster

The Island Poster

An idyllic island tryst turns deadly in this psychological thriller which makes you question how well you really know someone. On a beautiful remote island in Greece, young and spirited Alex joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max, a reclusive American who settled on the island decades ago. As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, tourists come & go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max's dark and mysterious past. The Island, also known as Haunted Heart or Isla Perdida in Spanish, is directed by Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba, director of many films including Opera Prima, Belle Epoque, The Dancer and the Thief, Chico & Rita, The Queen of Spain, Memories of My Father, and They Shot the Piano Player previously. The screenplay is by Rylend Grant and Fernando Trueba. Produced by Dago García, Cristina Huete, and Fernando Trueba. This initially premiered at the 2024 Atlàntida Film Fest this summer. Signature Ent. debuts Trueba's The Island direct-to-VOD in the UK starting on September 23rd, 2024. No US release date is set yet. Who's curious?
Plot: What's the story about?
An idyllic island tryst turns deadly in this psychological thriller which makes you question how well you really know someone. On a beautiful remote island in Greece, young and spirited Alex joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max, a reclusive American who settled on the island decades ago. As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, and tourists come and go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max's dark and mysterious past.
Signature Entertainment has released a poster and trailer for The Island (aka Haunted Heart), the psychological thriller from director Fernando Trueba.

The film follows Alex (Aida Folch), a young woman who takes a job as a waitress on a remote Greek island where she falls for its reclusive manager Max (Matt Dillon), but their relationship soon turns into a harrowing tale of survival when disturbing secrets begin to surface from Max’s past. Watch the trailer below…

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On a beautiful remote island in Greece, young and spirited Alex joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max, a reclusive American who settled on the island decades ago. As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, and tourists come and go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max’s dark and mysterious past.

The Island arrives on digital on September 23rd.

Filed Under: Amie Cranswick, Movies, News, Trailers
Tagged With: Aida Folch, Fernando Trueba, Juan Pablo Urrego, Matt Dillon, The Island
Signature Entertainment has just released the trailer for The Island, a gripping romantic thriller that promises to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. Starring Matt Dillon, Juan Pablo Urrego, and Aida Folch, the film is set against the stunning backdrop of a remote Greek island, where idyllic beauty masks dark and sinister secrets.

In The Island, also known as Haunted Heart or Isla Perdida in Spanish, the story revolves around Alex, a young and spirited waitress who starts working at a boutique seaside restaurant on the picturesque island. Her charm quickly captures the attention of the restaurant's charismatic owner, Enrico, but her affections are drawn to Max, the enigmatic American manager who has made the island his home for decades.

As Alex becomes entangled in a complex web of romance and intrigue, the film explores how well we truly know those around us. The tranquility of island life gives way to a psychological thriller as Enrico begins to unravel unsettling truths about Max’s shadowy past, leading to a crescendo of tension and suspense.

Directed by Fernando Trueba and with a screenplay co-written by Trueba and Rylend Grant, The Island delves into themes of love, betrayal, and hidden agendas. The film promises a potent mix of emotional depth and thrilling twists, ensuring that audiences will be engrossed from start to finish.

Set to be released on September 23, 2024, The Island is poised to make a significant impact with its compelling narrative and atmospheric setting. The trailer's release has already generated buzz, as fans eagerly anticipate how the film will unravel its mysterious and tantalizing storyline.
Psychological thriller ‘The Island' is coming to digital platforms in September it has been announced.

Starring Matt Dillon (‘The House That Jack Built'), Juan Pablo Urrego (‘Primate') and Aida Folch (‘The Artist and the Model'), ‘The Island' is directed by Fernando Trueba (‘Belle Epoque') from a script he co-wrote with Rylend Grant (‘State of Consciousness'). Watch the trailer below:

An idyllic island tryst turns deadly in this psychological thriller which makes you question how well you really know someone. On a beautiful remote island in Greece, young and spirited Alex (Folch) joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico (Urrego), she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max (Dillon), a reclusive American who settled on the island decades ago. As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, and tourists come and go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max's dark and mysterious past.

Take a look at the key art for ‘The Island' below:

The Island
Credit: Signature Entertainment
‘The Island' is available on Digital Platforms on 23rd September 2024, distributed by Signature Entertainment.
Haunted Heart is a noir thriller set in Greece, featuring a mysterious romance between Alex and Max.
Trueba, known for award-winning films, directs Haunted Heart and returns to his past themes with a darker tone.
Starring Matt Dillon and Aida Folch, the movie premieres on September 27 in select theaters and through On Demand platforms.
Screen Rant is pleased to present an exclusive first look at the new trailer for Haunted Heart, a noir thriller from renowned Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba. The movie takes place in Greece, on a remote island where a young and spirited woman named Alex (played by Aida Folch) takes a job at a boutique seaside restaurant. While there, she takes a liking to the mysterious and American restaurant manager Max (played by Matt Dillon), whose past is hidden behind lock and key.

Trueba has a storied history, both in terms of directing and screenwriting. His 1992 film Belle Epoque, starring Penelope Cruz, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. But he has also dabbled in English-language movies as well, starting with 1989's The Mad Monkey, featuring Jeff Goldblum. Haunted Heart promises to be a return to similar themes he's tackled in the past — albeit with a darker tone that's belied by the gorgeous Greek backdrops.

Mamma Mia where the movie was filmed
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Check out a first look at the Haunted House trailer below before the film premieres in theaters and through On Demand platforms on September 27. Trueba not only directed the movie, but he also cowrote the screenplay with Rylend Grant, underscoring his emotional investment in this latest directorial effort.

Haunted Heart Is An Exciting Return To Form For Matt Dillon
But he has plenty of support from his costars in this noir thriller.

The trailer shows Alex making her way to the Greek island, two weeks late for her original position at the restaurant. Max offers her a test run as a server for two weeks, and she does everything in her power to make him notice her even as she's warned that he won't share anything about himself or his past. Tensions rise and tempers flare as their romance blossom, with Max rejecting attempts to get more emotionally intimate while also exhibiting a strong tendency towards possessiveness and jealousy.

Matt Dillon has been in Hollywood for decades, often turning in stellar performances like his Oscar-nominated role in 2006's Crash and his unforgettable turn in There's Something About Mary. He's come a long way since Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders and now takes center stage once more as the mysterious and somewhat frightening Max. Folch's career, on the other hand, may not be quite as long but it has been remarkably busy. She shines in Haunted Heart, buoyed by supporting performances such as Juan Pablo Urrego's in the role of her concerned coworker who tries to warn her about Max.

Haunted Heart has a runtime of 128 and is being distributed by VMI Worldwide in the US. The movie will arrive in select theaters and On Demand on September 27.
Written and directed by Fernando Trueba, Haunted Heart is a romantic thriller that isn’t particularly romantic or thrilling. It does offer a few things to love, including a raw performance from Aida Folch and a gorgeous setting in the Greek Isles. But the characters aren’t well-developed and it takes far too long for any real action to happen. When the plot finally does get interesting, there’s so little revealed that it’s hard to care.

The story opens with Alex (Aida Folch), a Spanish woman, arriving on a remote Greek island for a job at Max’s (Matt Dillon) restaurant. Unfortunately, her arrival is nearly a week behind schedule. Max has given her hostess job to someone else. After some negotiation, Max agrees to let Alex take a different role at the restaurant, as a server. He only asks that she give two weeks notice before she leaves.

These opening scenes establish Max as a sage, calm, kind, and dependable and Alex as a bit of a helpless mess. And then things abruptly change. Alex makes friends, is great at her job, and turns into a bit of a sex kitten, hellbent on getting Max into bed. She’s confident and open with him. He’s awkward and closed off. Alex’s change is jarring. I kept waiting for the naive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed girl to come back but she never did.

Matt Dillon’s performance as Max is erratic. There are moments where he captures the essence of the silent, tortured man so well. And other moments where his delivery is so cheesy I chuckled. Folch plays Alex as unsophisticated, then sexy, and then afraid, as the script calls for, but each version of the character seems disjointed from the rest.

We spend the first hour of the film letting Alex and Max meet and get acquainted as a couple, an hour feels slow and empty. Alex gets settled on the island then relentlessly seduces her boss, who puts up a fight before surrendering. There’s not much to connect them other than the fact that they’re two attractive people on a remote island together. It’s not perfect, but they seem content.

Then something shifts. Alex discovers a concerning photo from Max’s past, which leads to more questions and more clues to his life before the island. When Alex confronts Max, he lies or tells her he needs more time. And somehow, in the span of thirty minutes the story goes from a happy couple living an idyllic island life to a murder spree. And what bothers me the most is that we never learn exactly why.

Alex has been lied to by a lover in the past and she says she won’t let it happen again. But she does. Max is dropping red flags in every direction, yet she stays. Why? We never understand. We never even see her struggle with the decision. It’s all a missed opportunity to give us more of Alex’s depth.

With Max, we learn various random facts about him that never really add up to anything. He used to be a musician. He used to have a partner and a child. There’s something about “Malibu Canyon.” What it is, we’ll never know. We’ll speculate and infer, but we’ll never know “why” and we’ll never really even know “what.” There’s no story here, just hints of a story. We don’t know enough about Alex or Max’s past or present to make any meaningful inferences about their characters.

In the entire third act, both characters are acting volatile, but we also don’t know them well enough to make that judgment. By the time we get to the final scene, everything just feels random. Why did Max ask for two weeks notice? It felt like foreshadowing when the question was asked, but it comes to nothing. A generous interpretation would call it a red herring but realistically, I think it’s just a weak metaphor.

But the worst offense of all with this movie is that it’s not scary enough to be a thriller, romantic or otherwise. There is murder. There are chase scenes. There is mistrust. But I never felt scared. There is a literal manhunt between two people alone on an island. That’s scary! But the movie didn’t deliver that feeling.

I do believe Haunted Heart has unrealized potential. It’s beautiful to look at and fun to speculate about the details of the characters’ previous lives. Ultimately, it fails to master the art of leaving things unsaid and doesn’t deliver on the romance or thrills it promises.

Haunted Heart is now in theaters.

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Original title
Haunted Heart
Year
2024
Running time
128 min.
Country
Spain Spain
Director
Fernando Trueba
Screenwriter
Rylend Grant, Fernando Trueba
Cast
Music
Zbigniew Preisner
Cinematography
Sergio Iván Castaño
Producer
Co-production Spain-Colombia; Fernando Trueba P.C., Caracol Televisión, Atlántika Films, RTVE, ICAA
Genre
Thriller. Drama. Romance | Neo-noir
Synopsis
Alex is a Spanish woman who starts a new job as a waitress in a restaurant on a lost island. Despite quickly winning the heart of Brazilian Enrico, Alex falls in love with Max, the American manager of the establishment. As their love blossoms, disturbing clues begin to emerge about Max's dark and mysterious past.
Critics' reviews
"Fernando Trueba gets most of the ingredients right – exotic location, good-looking leads, a few different narrative reveals up its sleeve – but flubs the execution, leaving his cast floundering (...) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
Catherine Bray: The Guardian
"Never manages to shake off the hauntings of its influences to become a film of its own."
Jonathan Holland: Screendaily
Movie Soulmates' ratings
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Haunted Heart (Spanish: Isla perdida, lit. 'Lost Island'), also known as The Island, is a 2024 thriller film directed by Fernando Trueba, written by Trueba and Rylend Grant, and starring Matt Dillon and Aida Folch alongside Juan Pablo Urrego.

Plot
Set in remote Greek island,[1] the plot involves Spanish woman Alex entering to work in a seaside restaurant managed by American owner Max (himself with a dark and mysterious past).[2]

Cast
Aida Folch as Alex[2]
Matt Dillon as Max[2]
Juan Pablo Urrego as Chico[2]
Production
The screenplay was written by Fernando Trueba and Rylend Grant.[1] Trueba said that he took inspiration from Patricia Highsmith's novels and Alfred Hitchcock's films.[3] He also said that if he had to classify the film, he would classify it under the "romantic suspense" label.[4] The film is a Fernando Trueba PC, Atlantika Films, and Caracol Inc. production, with the participation of RTVE, Ekome Greece, Caracol Inc., Deloitte Spain and Film Constellation, and support from ICAA and the Madrid regional administration.[1][3] Shooting locations included Greece.[2]

Release
The film had its world premiere at the Atlàntida Mallorca Film Fest (AMFF) on 20 July 2024.[5][6] Distributed by BTeam Pictures, the film was released theatrically in Spain on 23 August 2024.[7][8][3] VMI Releasing acquired North-American distribution rights.[9]

Reception
Jonathan Holland of ScreenDaily deemed the film to be "always watchable but very conventional, never providing anything new or unexpected".[10]

Javier Ocaña of El País wrote that "the result does not live up to the concept", with the film starting off "bad", improving a lot with the romance [between the two lead characters], an uneveness arising again when thriller fully takes over.[11]

Santiago Alverú [ca] of Cinemanía rated the film 3½ stars, considering that eventually "it is Aida Folch who holds everything together".[12]

Catherine Bray of The Guardian rated the film 2 out of 5 stars, writing that Trueba "gets most of the ingredients right – exotic location, good-looking leads, a few different narrative reveals up its sleeve – but flubs the execution, leaving his cast floundering".[13]

See also
List of Spanish films of 2024
Directed by Fernando Trueba
Written by
Fernando Trueba
Rylend Grant
Produced by
Cristina Huete
Starring
Matt Dillon
Aida Folch
Juan Pablo Urrego
Kika Georgiou
Polydoros Vogiatzis
Cinematography Sergio Iván Castaño
Edited by Marta Velasco
Music by Zbigniew Preisner
Production
companies
Fernando Trueba PC
Caracol Televisión
Distributed by BTeam Pictures
Release dates
20 July 2024 (AMFF)
23 August 2024 (Spain)
Language English