Although the Shutter Island locale looks like a crazy place — literally, as most of the people who live there are criminally insane, or so the trailer tells us — it’s not the nuttiest island to appear on film or TV. So, in honor of this place and its spooky mysteries, we’ve assembled this gallery of the fifteen weirdest islands ever captured on tape. Click through for a trip down zombie, donkey, and dinosaur lane. And let us know if we left any place out!
Two “federally appointed U.S. marshals” visit an island asylum for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of one of its patients.
Special properties: No spoilers! But definitely remote, mossy, romantic, and home to the insane.
Get me off this island, because: The spoilers are very, very hard to avoid.
Dinosaurs have been brought back to life, and they roam freely on a dinosaur-theme-park island off the coast of Costa Rica — until things go wrong! Very wrong. Very, very, very … you get the idea.
Special properties: Rides, merch. Also, real live dinosaurs!
Get me off this island, because: We think the rippling water in this plastic cup is trying to tell us something. Also, even the friendly herbivores will sneeze in your face.
The year is 2010, and obese exiled scientist Marlon Brando has only partially succeeded in breeding human-animal hybrids.
Special properties: Freaky animal people, Marlon Brando covered in white powder.
Get me off this island, because: This was Fairuza Balk’s first post-Craft movie. Fairuza, no!
Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell are undercover cops on Eden, a fantastical island resort of sexual freedom, tracking a man who accidentally witnessed a diamond smuggling.
Special properties: Sexual fantasy realization (S&M, bondage).
Get me off this island, because: Hello — Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell in bondage gear.
Pleasure Island is a place for little boys to be bad — to smoke and fight and gamble and drink and vandalize — but it also has a dark secret.
Special properties: It transforms boys into donkeys. But it also has talking carnival rides, games, free food, and free drinks.
Get me off this island, because: Young boys and animated puppets cannot handle their liquor.
The survivors of a plane crash between Australia and America find themselves stranded on what is likely the strangest island in history (“history”).
Special properties: Time-travel, healing powers, inaccessibility, polar bears, smoke monsters, beautiful beaches.
Get me off this island, because: Don’t tell me what I can’t do!
A group of fun-loving teens arrive on an island expecting a rave — but the island’s been taken over by zombies!
Special properties: Rusticity, transforming of humans into zombies, isolation, party vibe.
Get me off this island, because: The comedown is awful.
A mysterious virus on a tropical island is turning dead people into flesh-hungry zombies, and one doctor wants to find out why. Everyone else just wants to get off the island.
Special properties: Rusticity, transforming of long-(long-long)-dead corpses into zombies.
Get me off this island, because: An underwater zombie killed and ate a shark. Underwater!
Eight million people are trapped on an island with four fashionable psychopaths.
Special properties: Good restaurants, museums, reliable and extensive public transportation.
Get me off this island, because: “Brooklyn is the new Manhattan.”
A group of Japanese schoolchildren are herded to an island, given random weapons, and forced to kill one another. Exploding remote-controlled collars go off on those who don’t follow the rules. The last one standing will be allowed to leave the island.
Special properties: Deserted — except for Japanese schoolchildren.
Get me off this island, because: I was given a paper fan while my friends were given guns?
Four couples arrive at a romantic tropical island where they are plied with alcohol and encouraged to cheat on one another.
Special properties: Bottomless cocktails, attractive strangers.
Get me off this island, because: Google will always know that I was on this show.
A pilot stranded in the desert meets a freaky, doll-like little boy who turns out to be the prince of a tiny planet — the ultimate island? — and enlightens him with a series of strange musical adventures. It is “an experience you and the child inside will never forget.”
Special properties: Magical adults, spooky little boys, time and space travel.
Get me off this island, because: The boy appears to be the human embodiment of evil!
Azkaban is the island where criminal magicians are jailed and tormented by soul-sucking Dementors. The Alcatraz of the wizarding world.
Special properties: Ghouls, insanity-making.
Get me off this island, because:Fair’s fair, actually — do the crime, serve the time.
The citizens and summer people of Nantucket-like Amity Island are terrorized by a giant shark, and only a motley crew of shark hunters can stop it.
Special properties: Beautiful beaches, sun, small-town atmosphere, huge shark.
Get me off this island, because: I just want to swim nude in peace.
A policeman is called to Summerisle, a remote island off the coast of Scotland, to investigate a young girl’s mysterious disappearance. The townspeople are strangely unhelpful, however, and their pagan rituals are even stranger.
Special properties: Strange teachings, sexual temptation, pagan rituals, beautiful women.
Get me off this island, because: Nicolas Cage is coming in 33 years to ruin it for everyone.
