Lord of the Flies

No doubt a great book by William Golding, but this is not the greatest of movies. It is of course the tale of a group of school boys marooned on a desert island who lose all sense of moral direction and revert to savagery by the end of the movie. The ending is one of its biggest problems. It’s all over too suddenly and you are left with no satisfaction or resolution. Not quite enough is made of the “Lord of the Flies” either which is meant to be a sinister and menacing presence in the story. The name (probably) comes from the Hebrew word for the devil, Beelzebub, which literally means Lord of the Flies. I found the boys’ acting a little stiff at the start of the film, but on the plus side they seemed to settle in the roles as it went on.