One by One

On my friend Rob's recommendation, I rented the first disc of the TV show Harper's Island a few weeks ago, knowing only that it was some kind of murder mystery and that a cast member was killed off each week. I vaguely remembered the commercials on CBS, but for some reason gave it a pass.

When I removed the disc from the sleeve, I chuckled at the episode titles printed on it: "Whap", "Crackle", "Ka-Blam" and "Bang". With names like that, I thought this show would make me laugh. How wrong I was....

In "Whap", the first episode, a wedding party for Henry Dunn and his fiancée Trish Wellington is getting ready to leave port from Seattle, heading for Harper's Island for the big event. As the last remaining guests arrive, Henry's best friend, Abby Mills, from his time growing up on the island finally arrives, though she dreads returning there. After all, her mother was the victim of a serial killer on the island, and her father, the island's sheriff, sent her away immediately after the murdered was killed. She hadn't visited her childhood home since then, and feelings about her mother's death still haunt her.

As the boat prepares to leave, Trish keeps wondering where the last member of the wedding party -- her Uncle Ben -- is; no one has seen him, and he's not returning phone calls. But unable to wait any longer, the boat finally departs...and we discover what exactly happened to Ben.

Once on the island, members of the wedding party start getting picked off one by one, reviving the island's dark past and turning the guests against one another.

As the episodes continued, I found myself getting hooked. Everyone in the cast gave fine performances, but what really sold me on the show was the story. The writers did a great job leading me in different directions, making me think this person had to be the killer only to discover something that pointed in another direction completely. I was constantly on my toes, trying to figure out whodunnit with each new twist. It takes a good storyteller to take all those red herrings and form them into a logical storyline, and this one worked incredibly well. Also, the timeline was consistent so when the next episode began, it was as if little or no time had passed since the previous one.

The fact that some of the deaths were more violent and bloody also surprised me; prime time TV isn't known for taking too many risks, and I loved that the show's creators were willing to show the grittier side of events. One character receives a harpoon through the chest; another is sliced through by a falling headspade.

And the episode titles? Those come from the sounds made when a main character is killed during the episode.

I enjoyed that first disc enough that bought the DVD set in order to watch the remaining episodes without waiting for the next disc to arrive in the mail. Fans of slasher movies and fans of mysteries will definitely get a rush from this show.


Image from Famous Monsters of Filmland.