It might come as a surprise to you that growing up, I was really into Scooby Doo, I had videos and DVDs and binge watched Boomerang and its endless reruns of the old cartoons. But as I grew older, I eventually fell out of love with Scooby Doo, with it joining the ranks of Ben 10 and Yu-Gi-Oh as we went our separate ways on the path of life. As time went by though, Scooby Doo found its way back onto the TV thanks to my nephew, and when Lego released a handful of Scooby Doo sets, I picked up their Mystery Machine set, but I never got back into the series, especially with how the series had gone since I was a fan, even considering how meh it already was. But Halloween is upon us once again, and when the song It's Terror Time Again popped up in my YouTube recommendations, it gave me a brilliant idea for the review to kick off the season.
And since it's probably been about fifteen years since I last watched it, watching it again proved to be a very odd experience. On one hand, a lot of the film had faded from my memory, but on the other hand, seeing just how much of the film I did remember play out on the screen was very weird. For some reason Shaggy and Scooby's boss firing them for eating the contraband is something I've always remembered, even if I didn't remember remembering it, if that makes sense. But the cute thing about this film is where it starts, with the gang split and all starting to miss each other, Daphne and Fred have a popular TV series, meanwhile Velma has gone full Ray from Ghostbusters 2 and now runs a middling book store, and Shaggy and Scooby are bouncing from job to job, with us catching up with them just as they're getting fired from airport customs. Before that though, the film's opening scene is a great little taste of old fashioned Scooby Doo, with a sequence of them being chased through a spooky castle by a monster which is obviously revealed to be a fiend in a mask, before reintroducing us to the gang after their split, so don't expect a contrived scene of them breaking up like in the live action film that followed a few years after this one. Yet what does still stand out is the likability of the gang, specifically Shaggy and Scooby, who are obviously the stars of the show thanks to their amazing chemistry and habit of getting into trouble. But from what I remember of the old shows, it's cool how faithful the film is to its characters, while also making some natural changes; Shaggy and Scooby are already a perfect pair, and Velma is solid as the brains of the group. 
Fred and Daphne meanwhile are a surprisingly compelling pair of heroes, with Daphne being very business focused thanks to her job in television, while Fred juggles his ego with now being behind the scenes on his and Daphne's adventures. It being Scooby Doo however, you really shouldn't expect any kind of complexity from any of them, these characters don't grow over the course of the film, instead relying pretty much exclusively on their inherent charm which is admittedly strong. Like the older Scooby Doo shows, the film is also populated with a host of side characters that serve as suspects in the mystery, and naturally, they're where things get a bit more whacky. First we have the hosts, Lena and Simone, who own the house and pepper plantation on the island. Simone is considerably less likable than Lena, simply because of how mean she is to Scooby and Shaggy, while Lena is the more inviting of the two, particularly to Fred, using his ego against him in a lot of the film's more crucial moments. Oddly, these two are the most out of place aspect of the film, as later in the film when their backstory is explored, it gets really dark, and in addition to the horror of said backstory, the implications of what they have done are downright terrifying, far more frightening than any Scooby Doo movie has the right to be. Other suspects include Beau, the grouchy gardener who always seems to be up to something, showing up in weird places and digging around the island in secret, figuratively and literally. Then there's Snakebite, who is voiced by Mark Hamill, he's a crazy hunter stalking the bayou in search of a legendary catfish with is hunting pig, Mojo, and he hates tourists, which gives him more than enough of a motive to be the villain, but like most obvious suspects in Scooby Doo, he's a red herring. 
This is nothing new to Scooby Doo, or at least what I remember of it; each episode would follow the same formula of a mystery, a monster and a bunch of suspects, but Zombie Island takes this formula in a very different and considerably darker direction. Gone is the contrived plot of a villain with selfish plans using a monster to scare people away, though the film goes out of its way to set this outcome up by establishing that a legendary pirate buried his treasure on the island. In place of the usual reveal is a genuine supernatural event, one built up after a surprisingly compelling series of discoveries and monstrous encounters, and like I've said a few times, it gets dark, like scare your kids dark, all while never losing that Scooby Doo charm. That being said, for a film as short as this one, it's attempt to stretch the formula of a classic Scooby Doo episode into a full length story comes with downsides, chiefly how slow it feels. The film never feels long or slow when Scooby and Shaggy are on screen, and they really do carry the film, which isn't surprising. There is also a point about two thirds of the way into the film where things really get going, but getting to that is a bit of a slog, though since I loved this film as a kid, this is something that I don't think would bother kids watching it because it's Scooby Doo and he's awesome. Something else that a kid probably wouldn't notice or care about is the film's lack of subtlety; rarely leaving anything to the imagination or trusting the audience to figure things out, even to the point of explaining what is clearly presented on the screen, which is just patronising. 
And yet despite its frequently patronising storytelling, the film is also lacking in any kind of moral messaging, which isn't a bad thing, partly because that'd be even more patronising and also because a bad moral message can and will a kill a movie, just look at Captain Marvel, I just find it odd that this film explains everything else annoyingly clearly, yet doesn't then tell you to be a good person at the end. It gets even stanger that the film can be so geared to a young audience and then be so scary; now, I don't think it's scary because I'm an adult, but as I said earlier, some of this film's implications are frightening, as are a couple of its scenes. You know that I'm going to talk about Terror Time Again, it's an awesome song that I've listened to every Halloween for the last few years, but the sequence that accompanies it immediately follows the revelation that the film's zombies are real, and these zombies, while tame by Walking Dead standards, certainly aren't by Scooby Doo standards, and the best thing is they're not even the worst thing the film offers. In the finale when everything is revealed, the film's imagery is stepped up considerably, not just in its ghoulish monsters, but in more subtle ways, believe it or not. The twist that the zombies aren't the real danger is a genuinely good one, one that accompanies some seriously twisted and moderately morally ambiguous backstory, oh yes, moral ambiguity in a Scooby Doo movie, again, believe it or not. But it is still a kids film, so it ends on a very upbeat note, albeit with a final, subtly dreadful implication that's obviously just a laugh. The ending, still being a kids film, comes across as very triumphant, with the good guys winning and the bad guys getting what they deserve, which, once again, is a bit intense for a kids film, but that's what I like to see in the spookier brand of kids films, so all's good.
What's the Matter, Cat Got Your Tongue?
Watching Scooby Doo on Zombie Island as an adult went about as well as I was expecting it to; a lot of things about the film struggle, thanks largely to the simple truth that I'm grown up now and can see a lot of the film's faults clearly. It has a habit of explaining itself too much, to the point of feeling patronising, its characters aren't developed in any way, but are kept from becoming forgettable thanks their undeniable charm, and the film's first two thirds can drag on a bit. But on the other hand, Zombie Island has some genuinely intense sequences, some surprisingly scary monsters and Scooby and Shaggy, a pair that I wager could make even the most abysmal instalments of this franchise tolerable to watch. Overall, the film is clearly more for kids but it's not without its charms, and I'd say it's worth a watch.
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