Harper’s Island is horrific whodunnit fun

I’m a sucker for horror movies and TV shows. I’m even a sucker for cheesy B-movie junk that’s only on cable at 3 AM. At one time I even had a column over on Cinematical that I sadly had no time for, which I named “Killer Blog from Cyberspace.” The thing about horror is that it’s good when it scares the shit out of you when it’s well done, and it can make you laugh your ass off when it’s horrible. It’s a win all around.

I got the chance to watch CBS’s upcoming horror television series Harper’s Island a couple of weeks ago, which airs tonight at 10 PM EST. I had seen a shortened screener for it last year, and I was definitely intrigued by what they were trying to accomplish. The full screener now has me more intrigued.
The general premise goes something like this. A group of friends and family of bride-to-be Trish Wellington and groom-to-be Henry Dunn are traveling to an island off the coast of Seattle called — you guessed it — Harper’s Island, to attend the couple’s wedding there. Strange things begin to happen very quickly as, one by one, people are “taken out of the picture” in sometimes unique, usually very gory ways … at least so far. I tend to not think they’ll be toning down the violent slaughters at any point of the show.

The real fun of Harper’s Island is going to be figuring out who the mysterious, sadistic killer is and how, by way of obvious elimination, our choice should become easier. We’re immediately made out to believe this person is one of 25 characters introduced throughout the season, all who have a reason or two to be a prime suspect. Is it the girl who’s seeing things, or the angry relative? Could it be the jealous ex-boyfriend or the local islander with a shady past? Maybe it’s just some random dude we barely know anything about.

There are a couple things about this show that make it stand out. One is that it’s set to end at the end of this one season. No cliff-hanger of an ending — that’s all folks. We won’t be dragged into next season wondering who the killer is. In this way it plays out much like a really long movie, and I like that idea a lot.

The other thing about this show is that, if you don’t like the first episode, you may as well just stop watching. This is it. It’s like watching one of the Scream movies — if you’re partway through it and don’t like it, it’s likely not going to meet your expectations and get any better. However, if you like this genre and are intrigued by the premise, you’re likely in for a fun and frightening ride.

Deb and I might be writing about this show back-and-forth within one post, trying something new with episode quasi-reviews. Maybe we’ll run a leaderboard for who’s the most likely to be the killer. If you think you’d be game for a Harper’s Island fantasy game, let us know in the comments and we’ll set something up after this first episode.

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Apr 09, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT