Paradise Hills, 2019

TRAILER

Paradise Hills is a 2019 Spanish science fantasy thriller film directed by Alice Waddington in her feature directorial debut. It stars Emma Roberts as Uma, a young woman sent to Paradise, a mysterious behavioural modification centre for women who have displeased their families, alongside Danielle Macdonald, Awkwafina, Jeremy Irvine, Arnaud Valois, Eiza González, and Milla Jovovich.

PLOT

At her wedding, rich socialite Uma is toasted by her guests, who compliment her new attitude. Later, she is pinned to a bed by her husband, Son, who happily remarks on how much more obedient she is.

Two months earlier, Uma awakens in a strange room and realizes that she is trapped on an island called Paradise. She runs away from her captors, but is caught and returned by a fellow patient, Amarna. It is explained to Uma that Paradise is essentially a sort of treatment center for rebellious young women; in Uma's case, she was admitted to the center for rejecting a marriage proposal her mother wants her to accept. Uma becomes friends with her roommates Chloe and Yu, as well as befriending Amarna, a well-known singer sent to Paradise after clashing with her management company.

As Uma adjusts to life on the island, her boyfriend from the mainland, Markus, sneaks onto the island posing as a gardener and promises that he can rescue her. A jealous Amarna tells Uma to be careful and reveals that she has her own secret plan to escape as her fans have smuggled her a rowboat she and Uma can use to leave. Before they can put their plan into action, Amarna is informed that she has graduated early. She tells Uma to rescue herself and Markus. Before she leaves, Amarna also reveals that the milk the women drink each day is drugged so they sleep through the night. Amarna parts from Uma with a kiss.

After a treatment during which Uma is forced to watch old news reports of her father's suicide, Uma reacts badly and is drugged and put into solitary confinement. She awakens two weeks later and meets with the Duchess, who runs the Paradise program. Learning that she will be sent home the next day, Uma decides to leave and convinces Chloe and Yu to run away with her in the night. Before they can escape, Yu is taken to an operating room for a final treatment. When Uma and Chloe try to rescue her, the doctors attack them, and the women are forced to kill them.

Uma, Chloe, and a badly injured Yu manage to escape. They stumble into a control room where they learn that their therapy has not been to rehabilitate them, but to replicate them. Uma learns that Markus never intended to rescue her, but was hired by Paradise to determine her behavior in sexual situations. As Uma and her friends run from the guards, they stumble into a room where they meet their "replicants"; poor and lower-class women who have undergone extensive plastic and cosmetic surgeries and been trained to mimic the voices and personalities of the patients so they can assume their identities. Yu dies and Chloe and Uma are forced to move on without her, but before they go, Uma leaves behind her memory locket of her father for her replacement and tells her that in order to fully embody Uma, she must hate Son, the man responsible for her father's death.

Uma and Chloe make their way into a garden where they see the lifeless bodies of former Paradise captives, including Amarna, ensnared in rose thorns. Uma sees the Duchess, who is revealed to be a vampiric rosebush, feeding on Chloe's body and is wrapped up in vines as the Duchess prepares to make her her next victim. However, Uma's replicant saves her by pretending to be the real Uma, distracting the Duchess enough so that Uma can fatally stab her with a scalpel. Uma and her replicant, Anna, manage to escape in the rowboat. Anna reveals she cannot return to her former life and so she and Uma develop a plan. Anna returns to Uma's wealthy family pretending to be Uma, and marries Son. On their wedding night, she remains downstairs while Uma herself seduces Son and stabs him before they can have sex. Anna is thus free from blame as she was downstairs among many witnesses when the murder occurred. Anna "discovers" Son's body and screams for help, now free to live her life as a wealthy widow. Uma, having secured her revenge, flees into the night to begin a new life.

Rating: 10 Stars