Harper's Island (2009)

 

Creator: Ari Schlossberg

Directors: Sanford Bookstaver, Rick Bota, Steve Boyum, Craig R. Baxley, Guy Norman Bee, Steve Gomer, Seith Mann, Scott Peters, Jon Turteltaub, and James Whitmore Jr.

Screenplay: Ari Schlossberg, Jeffrey Bell, Tyler Bensinger, Robert Levine, Christine Roum, Jill E. Blotevogel, Dan Shotz, Lindsay Sturman,  and Nichelle D. Tramble

Cast: Elaine Cassidy as  Abby Mills, Christopher Gorham as Henry Dunn, Matt Barr as Christopher 'Sully' Sullivan; Gina Holden as  Shea Allen; Katie Cassidy as Trish Wellington, Cassandra Sawtell as Madison Allen, Brandon Jay McLaren as Danny Brooks, C.J. Thomason as  Jimmy Mance, Jim Beaver as Sheriff Charlie Mills, Adam Campbell as  Cal Vandeusen, Cameron Richardson as Chloe Carter, Claudette Mink as Katherine Wellington, Amber Borycki as Beth Barrington, Dean Chekvala as J.D. Dunn, Ali Liebert as Nikki Bolton, Beverley Elliott as Maggie Krell,Chris Gauthier as Malcolm Ross

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #36

 

Predating American Horror Story, a successful horror series which began in 2011 and was an entirely different narrative (tone, subgenre, and time period) per season, Harper's Island was intended to follow on in its own world with its next season a different tale too. Time meant this did not happen, but we got a one season work which, over thirteen episodes, is a fully fleshed out tale in itself with a beginning leading to a conclusion. Television offers the length to elaborate on any narrative, and here there is an enticing one at hand that, with a sprinkle of added soap opera melodrama, how would a slasher film change if you had over ten hours to work with?

I have had an ambivalent attitude to slashers. When I have thought of this, ultimately when they reach their meat-and-potatoes, the kills to the chase sequences, in the final half or so they become less interesting unless they do something very unconventional. The goofy one dimensional characters and scenarios, and the rare cases where they try for something more than this like Halloween H20 (1998) and succeed, are of greater interest for me. Harper's Island can immediately stand out as the vast length it has requires more investment in the characters, dabbling in soap opera of adultery and backstabbing, allowing the premise to be elaborated upon until its ending due to being able to breathe.

Truthfully, I wished Harper's Island had stayed more to the melodrama by the final episodes, as a fascinating potpourri of genres blended together, but this is definitely one of the most distinct and accomplished of the slasher genre than many. In this world, a man named John Wakefield committed a massacre on the titular Harper's Island, becoming a figure of notoriety. Seven years later, a wedding is to take place on the island among its community, bringing locals back to the place including Abby Mills (Elaine Cassidy), who left due as much to her mother being one of Wakefield's victims and leaving her with a permanent trauma as a result. One of the great virtues of Harper's Island is that, even if there is an extremely high body, the cast is all elaborate and interesting even with pure archetypes of the genre. By the halfway point, there are still a lot of interesting characters left surviving, where the key leads stand out and figures who have managed to live still gain the weight, as a rolling stone gathers moss, you cannot practically do in a regular length slasher film, around usually ninety or less minutes, due to their usual pace, least not with a cast this large at least.  

Abby is set up as the "Final Girl", the figure who is there at the end of the slasher narrative to face the killer, but Elaine Cassidy thankfully has a lot to work with so she is not playing a bland lead who survives due to being this archetype. There is as much a mystery at hand through the show, of who is actually killing the cast, and everyone gets time to stand out. If anything, whilst riveting during the viewing, the one potential issue with Harper's Island is the same as I find with mysteries, literary or in other mediums, where I could not care less about guessing games, or going through them again to find the clues, that the personality is a much greater concern in whether they last in memory. Thankfully, Harper's Island has the personality to try; certainly the first half has this in spades, the number of characters allowing for all the sides of the genres uses to flourish. The lead heroine with a tragic past and a distance with her police officer father, who killed John Wakefield but may have lied about that; the soon-to-be-married young couple; frat boys who get in their own darkly humoured subplot when they find money from a previous victim, at another's on a stranded boat, trying to hide it afterwards; a father who hates his soon-to-be son-in-law, of wealth and thinking his daughter married beneath her, hiring her old ex to even woo her; the locals like the female bar keeper or an old flame from Abby's past; the groom's brother who is a red herring factory; the step mother of the bride, a trophy wife, who is in a secret BDSM relationship with her sister's husband; and the sister with her creepy and eccentric kid daughter.

Especially of note are the best characters, part of the bridesmaids with Chloe Carter (Cameron Richardson) and her English boyfriend Cal Vandeusen (Adam Campbell), brought along by his girlfriend as a pair of comedy characters to cut to even when the show gets more intense mid-way through. He is self conscious about the fact that, Chloe being an immensely attractive and energetic person, he looks to outsiders out-of-place dating her, self esteem weakened when he once fears if she ever met a more attractive guy with a British accent. The pair however are clearly soul mates in their playfulness and his attempts, including a ring going missing, to propose to her. In mind to this being a slasher narrative means that, with many legitimately likeable characters and not wanting to spoil what happens even in the spoiler section of this review, this show gets at the heart strings eventually, which is rareity in this genre and a success.

In terms of being a television show, it does hit its head on the glass ceiling in terms of sexual content, wishing to be saucy but little else. It is surprisingly gory for a show that was not airing on cable but commercial television in the United States. This visceral nature does subconsciously have an intensity as a result, even if some of the comically elaborate traps set up in the woodland proudly remind us of slasher films' broad natures. It is helped that, far from the slasher tropes being the dominant aspect, they easily intermingled with the melodrama, and the mystery angle of the show becomes as much a prerogative as the culprit becomes a slippery, constantly changing entity.

[Major Spoiler Warnings] It does become more and more a traditional slasher, the cast mostly killed off as the soapy melodrama dissipates. Helping considerably though is that these characters, not just the side characters who vanish, have had more time to grow in a television format that, when barely a handful survive by the final episodes, paces itself well. It can take on this fact to an advantage, when suddenly the jock stereotype gains honour before his end by helping others or that the least expected people survive. (It is not a surprise the child character is not killed though for a television production). The actual twist, which I am still going to hide even in the spoilers, is a good realising that slashers are far closer to pulpy melodrama than I had ever thought, what with secret half-siblings and a psychological obsession with trapping someone in their fantasy world of their childhood in a house. Something so overripe it befits the slashers but befits the content beforehand too. It does evoke that, yes, for me the real pleasure from slashers were never the kills but when they were melodramatic potboilers with a larger body count. [Spoilers End]

If my initial enthusiasm had dissipated - from burning through all the episodes over a week or so - that is merely purposely keeping my emotional reaction to a mildness so not to cloud my judgement. It should not ignore how distinct and perfectly executed this was. This is rare case of cancelled one season wonder which no one should complain ever got less than this season, as this story is told in its entirety as if it was a mini-series, down to its melancholic and sad coda of a home video of characters who died before and those who survived. It is, in mind to my preference to one off show entirely, also a fascinating experiment as it managed to take a genre in the slasher and made one, even with some restrictions, that fully took advantage of the virtues television could provide.