Henry Dunn (Christopher Gorham), who spent his summers on the island, and his long-time girlfriend (and now fiancee), Trish Wellington (Katie Cassidy), have brought a sizable wedding party onto the island. For the most part, none of these characters have ever stepped foot on Harper's Island, the one exception being Abby Mills (Elaine Cassidy), the Sheriff's daughter. Since the Wakefield case was closed, which occurred just after Abby's mother, and Wakefield's last victim, was discovered, her dad sent her off the island, but it seems the impending marriage and Abby's return has sparked a new series of murders that are very reminiscent of the Wakefield deaths.
At least one person dies in every episode, though most episodes have multiple deaths, and while noone realizes these people are gone in the first few episodes, when they start discovering the bodies, everyone becomes suspect. What is interesting is the ambiguity of the show. Early on, it is hard to tell if the series is taking a paranormal approach involving revenging spirits, a copy-cat killer or if it could possibly be Wakefield himself stalking everybody. The filming is done well enough to not reveal to the viewer who the killer is, and the show features plenty of red herrings (in fact, way too many for my taste) so that you really don't know who the killer could be until it is actually revealed.
Joining in on the wedding festivities are Henry's and Trish's friends; Sully (Matt Barr), Danny (Brandon Jay McLaren), Malcolm (Chris Gauthier), Booth (Sean Rogerson), Chloe (Cameron Richardson), Cal (Chloe's boyfriend played by Adam Campbell), Beth (Amber Borycki), Sarah (Lucy Daramour) and, of course, their family like Henry's younger, moody brother J.D. (Dean Chekvala), and the Wellington's (a very rich family) consisting of father Thomas (Richard Burgi), step-mother Katherine (Claudette Mink), sister Shea (Gina Holden), her husband Richard (David Lewis), and their daughter Madison (Cassandra Sawtell). There are also a few characters from the island like Abby's old boyfriend, Jimmy (C.J. Thomason), and his fishing partner Shane (Ben Cotton), and while these characters become important, they don't seem to be the focus of the killer's rage -- it seems to be primarily directed to those involved in Henry and Trish's impending nuptials.
Each episode does a fairly good job of not only killing one or more characters off, but doing so in various ways (which seems to go against the standard serial killer style of sticking to one M.O.). The show itself isn't that gory or gruesome. When one character is all but cleaved in half, you don't see the actual impact and never really see the body afterwards. In fact, most of the deaths occur just off camera so that your mind has to fill in the blanks. Call it necessary because it is made-for-TV or an homage to more classic horror tendencies, but either way, it works pretty well for Harper's Island.
What I found really interesting, and it was something I didn't even realize until watching the special features, was that the cast and most of the crew didn't even know who the killer was or even when they would be killed until a day or so before the script containing their death came out. The featurette titled "The Grim Reaper" talks about how the show's creators and writers chose to call up each actor who was to die and give them the bad news. Other special features include a segment where the cast and crew tries to guess who the killer is, as well as the standard making-of and casting featurettes and deleted scenes. Harper's Island also comes with the webisode series Harper's Globe that follows another story happening on the island at the same time with an employee of the local newspaper.
In the end, Harper's Island feels like a really long thriller/horror movie. If the story were condensed into a couple of hours, many of the red herrings and most likely, characters, wouldn't have even made it into an early script. Instead, by having the story span some nine hours (13 episodes), it gave the writers plenty of characters to kill, different ways to do it and a lot of opportunities to misdirect the viewers. Unfortunately, these frequent misdirections mean that about a third of the way through the series, I stopped looking at whomever the obvious killer was (of which everybody, even little Abby, was suspect at some point), and the show lost a little bit of its entertainment value at that point. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the rest of the plot. It just made it feel like it was dragging on a bit more than it should have. Either way, Harper's Island is a solid thriller that will leave you guessing the whole way through. If you are into the genre and want a lengthy experience, then this DVD might be what you are looking for.
