Montserrat: Emerald of the Caribbean (2007)

Plymouth is buried. Not metaphorically, not in some poetic sense. Literally buried. Ash and pyroclastic flow from the Soufrière Hills volcano in the late nineties swallowed the capital of Montserrat whole, and it just sits there now, frozen under grey rock, an exclusion zone the size of a small country cutting the island in two. The Caribbean Pompeii comparison isn't hyperbole. It's exactly what it is. And I genuinely had no idea until I sat down with this documentary.

That's the thing about doing an A-Z World Movie Tour. You end up watching stuff you'd never have sniffed out otherwise, and sometimes the film itself is rough around the edges but the subject matter grabs you by the collar. This is one of those cases.

Let me be straight with you: Montserrat: Emerald of the Caribbean is not polished. It has that unmistakable VHS-era community project energy. Shaky camera work, basic edits, people sitting in chairs talking directly to the lens, occasional swooping shots over misty green hills and crumbling ruins. You can find the filmmaker's work over on YouTube, and that context is important because this is passion project territory, not BBC Four territory. Expecting a slick, broadcast-ready documentary would be setting yourself up for disappointment.

But here's what I keep coming back to: I learned things. Real, surprising, genuinely fascinating things. And that, when all is said and done, is the whole point of a documentary, isn't it? The Irish connection to Montserrat, for a start, completely blindsided me. There are deep historical roots there, going back centuries to Irish indentured labourers and settlers, and the island's St Patrick's Day celebrations apparently go off in a way that would make Dublin jealous. It's one of those details that makes you feel briefly stupid for not knowing it, then immediately grateful you do now. It reminded me a little of watching Ben Fogle and the Buried City (2023), that same quality of a place holding more history and heartbreak than you'd ever have guessed from the outside.

The volcanic disaster story is haunting. More than half the island is now an exclusion zone. People lost their homes, their streets, their entire capital city, and had to rebuild their lives on what's left of a small island that was already small to begin with. The documentary captures some of that grief through its talking heads, local voices who clearly care deeply about the place and its story. That sincerity counts for a lot. You feel the heart behind the camera even when the technique is letting it down.

The hour runtime does start to drag in places. There's a tighter, sharper forty-five minute film hiding inside this one, and you feel its absence. Some sections repeat themselves or linger longer than they need to, and a more confident edit would've done the material real favours. The amateurish quality that feels charming in short bursts becomes a bit of a slog when it accumulates across a full hour.

So where does that leave me? Genuinely split, if I'm honest. The delivery is average at best. The content and the heart behind it are something else entirely. I came away knowing far more about a tiny Caribbean island than I did before, feeling something close to awe about its geological history and something close to sadness about what the eruption took from its people. That's not nothing. That's actually quite a lot.

Two and a half stars. Rough around the edges, occasionally bloated, but full marks for heart and for sending me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole that kept me up far too late.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2007  | Watched: 2025-07-22

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