HARPER'S ISLAND (SERIE COMPLETA)

Henry and Trish are getting married and want to celebrate the ceremony at Harper’s Island, Henry’s hometown. Among the wedding guests is Abby, an old friend of the groom and now a writer who moved to Los Angeles. In the island’s recent past, there is still a painful wound: seven years ago, a serial killer named John Wakefield killed several residents of Harper’s Island, including Abby’s mother, before being stopped and killed by the sheriff, Abby’s father. Just a few days before the ceremony, however, the wedding guests begin to disappear under the blows of a mysterious killer. Who wants to emulate Wakefield? And why? In 2004, the television Midas (but now also cinematic) J.J. Abrams launched a product destined to change the fate of television serials, of course I’m talking about “Lost,” a highly successful serial that overturned the rules of television fiction storytelling and dictated a new production/ideative trend that still feels its consequences today. Consequences that are taking shape through an impressive number and variety of TV series, often genuinely intent on experimenting. An example of this is “Harper’s Island,” a self-contained serial consisting of a single season of 13 episodes. “Harper’s Island” was born in the 2008/2009 season of the American network CBS and stems from the mind of Ari Schlossberg, a screenwriter, among other things, of the thriller with Robert De Niro “Hidden in the Dark.” Launched with an intelligent media campaign that focused everything on the body count and the mystery behind the identity of the killer, “Harper’s Island” also benefited from a parallel web mini-series, “Harper’s Globe,” which aimed to delve into some events related to the story’s contours and shot in an amateur style to create an aura of realism. We talked about experimentation; in reality, “Harper’s Island” does not present anything original, it is a slasher like many others, merging the Christianian mechanics of “Ten Little Indians” with the more modern narrative pacing of contemporary horror slashers. However, we must not forget that “Harper’s Island” is a television series, a serial to be precise (narrative continuity from episode to episode that creates one big story), and also self-contained, as if it were a film about 12 hours long. In these terms, the product in question appears to be something particularly unusual for the television landscape, probably thought with the aim of bringing a different audience to the language of TV series, a specific audience that normally rarely watches TV and is tied to the twists and violence of modern American thriller/horror cinema. In all this, Schlossberg and his collaborators were very skilled, not to mention courageous, approaching the “genre” in a way that is both classic and innovative. Of course, maintaining the mystery for 13 episodes without any drop in tone is a very difficult task, and even the creative team behind “Harper’s Island” was not able to perform miracles. The path followed by the screenwriters, in this case, was to build a narrative crescendo that really gets underway halfway through the season; this way, however, risks not capturing viewers right away, simply rewarding the more patient ones. The first episodes, in fact, (let’s say the first half of the series) are a bit weak, the story takes too long to get to the heart of the matter, and the climax of each episode is the death of a character, which usually represents the closure. Obviously, the first episodes, on the other hand, are used to outline the character traits of each character and to introduce the subplots, although it must be admitted that most of the characters cannot be considered really successful. If we exclude, in fact, the true protagonists of the series, a few exceptions (the couple formed by the young English doctor and the blonde airhead, the island hick Shane and Sheriff Mills), most of the “people” of “Harper’s Island” are made up of uncharismatic characters, sometimes extremely superficial albeit “durable” and mostly inserted into the plot just to make up the numbers. Other times we find ourselves with characters who, although adequately characterized, turn out to be extremely banal and with an unmistakable air of déjà-vu, starting with the depressed and dark brother and the girl who would like to pass for unsettling. By the time we reach the 6/7th episode, when the characterizations, for better or worse, are now out in the open, we begin to focus on the plot, increasingly complicated and engaging, made up of revelations and plot twists (some even anticipated by “incorrect” red herrings, it must be said). The conclusion and resolution of the mystery, although not original nor particularly “intelligent,” is rather well-conceived and manages to remedy even those that from time to time could be identified as plot holes. It should be added that, despite being a television product, there is always particular care for the visual aspect (photography and sets in particular) and also a not indifferent dose of gore brought to the scene by often imaginative and sometimes even gruesome killings that bring “Harper’s Island” closer to the horror universe tout court. In short, “Harper’s Island” is a TV series worth approaching, especially if you are a fan of the thriller/horror-slasher genre. The flaws are often macroscopic and lie precisely where the ABC of television fiction lies, but the uniqueness of this product makes it an object to watch anyway, an experiment that perhaps will not even have an actual follow-up in television language (ratings in America – but also in Italy – did not decree its success) and for this even more precious. Probable fate of cult and retroactive revaluation.