What aunt_zelda Thinks: Harper's Island
Oct. 30th, 2011 04:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aunt_zeldaWARNING: Comments contain SPOILERS. DO NOT READ THEM. GO WATCH THE SHOW, THEN READ THE COMMENTS.
I really loved this show ... and I wasn't expecting to.
I was expecting to go "meh" or get scared or squicked and abandon it quickly. Then I got through the whole show in less than a week (while trying to get all this crazy homework done and sleep at some point, mind you) and it made me CRY.
Oh sure, at first I'd joke to myself about the heteronormative overtones and I was yelping "no, no, don't do that you stupid people! Be Genre Savvy! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! SHUT UP SHANE! STOP SPLITTING UP! SHUT UP SHANE!" at various intervals, and yeah, from about the second half onwards there were some cliches and narmy bits and it lost a little something, and the ending kinda bugs me and I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about that whole situation ...
But this was a damn good show. A really damn good show, and more people need to check it out because it Needs More Love.
Basically the premise is that a wedding is going to take place on this semi-isolated island community where a bunch of nasty serial killings occurred seven years previously, the mother of one of the guests being one of the victims. Said guest, Abby, is our main character and the quintessential Final Girl, and she hasn't been back to the island since, or contacted her father, the Sheriff, at all.
But, of course, killings start up again, slowly at first, so slowly that people don't really notice, or it doesn't take much for people to shrug off the vanished guests. But as the bodies start to pile up and things go from suspenseful and fine to batshit insane and paranoid in the space of an episode with people making a list of everyone they haven't seen for a few days and realizing with horror that they're all probably dead.
The show is really good about playing around with your expectations. It's hard for me to watch a lot of tv shows and movies anymore, being so overexposed and such a tvtropes junkie, because I pick up on plots and tropes a lot. Harper's Island surprised me again and again, played with my expectations and jerked me around, and then grinned at me, because it KNEW what it had just done and it was proud of itself for catching me off-guard. And I grinned back, because the show deserves my respect.
Also, believable female characters (for the most part ... I'm lookin' at you, Shae and Madison ...) who weren't STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS but strong, female, and characters. Sure, they took their shirts off a little more than was necessary for the plot, but with a very few exceptions they never felt fake. They felt like real people, even the bridesmaid with the little dog. And it's always satisfying to see female characters fighting back against a bad guy in a realistic way, not busting out surprise kung-fu but fighting with messy desperation and using everything at hand and RUNNING AWAY when they have to.
The fighting in this show is very good. I also really appreciated the variety of the kills, this isn't a serial killer who has a signature style exactly (though they do have a favorite weapon, said weapon isn't used for every single kill.) People are hung in at least three different ways, someone is burned alive, someone is drowned, a man is shot with a trapped gun, people are stabbed, a man is nearly cut in half, a man IS cut in half ... the deaths are disturbing but not overtly so (except for the guy who gets cut in half ... ew. Oh gods, ew. And the ... the guy who was found in the pond ... nightmares ...) and it's more about the suspense and shock of other people finding or not-finding the corpses instead of ZOMG GORY DEATH YOU GUYS LOOK AT ALL THE FAKE BLOOD WE BOUGHT IT IN BULK! It's about serial killings, but it's not focussed on just the gory death, it's more about the fallout of said gory death. This is what would happen if you took a standard horror movie and got the time and budget to stretch it out into 13 episodes: in a movie you don't have a lot of time to build up characters, certainly not so many characters, and so a lot of the victims are red shirts and you end up not caring about many or ANY of them at all. There's more suspense, character development, creativity, and paranoid guesswork about WHO THE KILLER IS IS IT YOU ZOMG IT MUST BE YOU ALL SIGNS LEAD TO YOU ... WHOOPS NOW YOU'RE DEAD ZOMG WHO IS THE KILLER?! And I love it to bits for that.
While there are some VERY annoying characters (GAH, Shae, SHUT THE FUCK UP ... Shane, SHUT UP ... Madison ... WTF ... why are two of my least-favorite characters called "Shae" and "Shane" was that intentional?) they are outnumbered by a sizeable (but dwindling, of course) cast of genuinely NICE people, and for most of them you'll feel bad when they die. I could go on for ages about a certain pair of deaths towards the end of the series, but I won't, because it is a massive spoiler. Suffice to say I WEPT and felt awful, but I didn't hate the show for killing off my favorite characters because it was done so very well. THAT is how you handle character death, people. It was almost the end of the show and the characters who'd gone through the most growth and been consistently amusing and adorable throughout the episodes and it looked like they might get away and survive this whole horrible thing ... died. And I didn't write a gigantic angry rant about it or scream or kick things. I cried, and then I thanked the show for hurting me so good.Please, sir, may I have another? *bats eyelashes*
That's what it really comes down to, this show is well done. It may not be the best thing ever all of the time, and there are points where it's kinda silly or stupid or annoying, but it's always presented in an effective, well-thought-out, or nicely packaged way so even though you might not like the taste you can admire the composition, if that makes any sense. I'm not even covering everything that I liked about this, even, I know I'm leaving stuff out, not just spoilers but more stuff that I simply don't have the time to go into.
So, in the spirit of Halloween, I encourage you to give this show a look. It's really good, only 13 episodes, and well worth a watch.
Someday I'm going to come back to this and do a review of each episode, or a spoilery WAZT about the twists and fake-outs and the final deaths and the ending. If I ever figure out vlogging, this is going on my list of "stuff to review."
I really loved this show ... and I wasn't expecting to.
I was expecting to go "meh" or get scared or squicked and abandon it quickly. Then I got through the whole show in less than a week (while trying to get all this crazy homework done and sleep at some point, mind you) and it made me CRY.
Oh sure, at first I'd joke to myself about the heteronormative overtones and I was yelping "no, no, don't do that you stupid people! Be Genre Savvy! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE! SHUT UP SHANE! STOP SPLITTING UP! SHUT UP SHANE!" at various intervals, and yeah, from about the second half onwards there were some cliches and narmy bits and it lost a little something, and the ending kinda bugs me and I'm still not entirely sure how to feel about that whole situation ...
But this was a damn good show. A really damn good show, and more people need to check it out because it Needs More Love.
Basically the premise is that a wedding is going to take place on this semi-isolated island community where a bunch of nasty serial killings occurred seven years previously, the mother of one of the guests being one of the victims. Said guest, Abby, is our main character and the quintessential Final Girl, and she hasn't been back to the island since, or contacted her father, the Sheriff, at all.
But, of course, killings start up again, slowly at first, so slowly that people don't really notice, or it doesn't take much for people to shrug off the vanished guests. But as the bodies start to pile up and things go from suspenseful and fine to batshit insane and paranoid in the space of an episode with people making a list of everyone they haven't seen for a few days and realizing with horror that they're all probably dead.
The show is really good about playing around with your expectations. It's hard for me to watch a lot of tv shows and movies anymore, being so overexposed and such a tvtropes junkie, because I pick up on plots and tropes a lot. Harper's Island surprised me again and again, played with my expectations and jerked me around, and then grinned at me, because it KNEW what it had just done and it was proud of itself for catching me off-guard. And I grinned back, because the show deserves my respect.
Also, believable female characters (for the most part ... I'm lookin' at you, Shae and Madison ...) who weren't STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS but strong, female, and characters. Sure, they took their shirts off a little more than was necessary for the plot, but with a very few exceptions they never felt fake. They felt like real people, even the bridesmaid with the little dog. And it's always satisfying to see female characters fighting back against a bad guy in a realistic way, not busting out surprise kung-fu but fighting with messy desperation and using everything at hand and RUNNING AWAY when they have to.
The fighting in this show is very good. I also really appreciated the variety of the kills, this isn't a serial killer who has a signature style exactly (though they do have a favorite weapon, said weapon isn't used for every single kill.) People are hung in at least three different ways, someone is burned alive, someone is drowned, a man is shot with a trapped gun, people are stabbed, a man is nearly cut in half, a man IS cut in half ... the deaths are disturbing but not overtly so (except for the guy who gets cut in half ... ew. Oh gods, ew. And the ... the guy who was found in the pond ... nightmares ...) and it's more about the suspense and shock of other people finding or not-finding the corpses instead of ZOMG GORY DEATH YOU GUYS LOOK AT ALL THE FAKE BLOOD WE BOUGHT IT IN BULK! It's about serial killings, but it's not focussed on just the gory death, it's more about the fallout of said gory death. This is what would happen if you took a standard horror movie and got the time and budget to stretch it out into 13 episodes: in a movie you don't have a lot of time to build up characters, certainly not so many characters, and so a lot of the victims are red shirts and you end up not caring about many or ANY of them at all. There's more suspense, character development, creativity, and paranoid guesswork about WHO THE KILLER IS IS IT YOU ZOMG IT MUST BE YOU ALL SIGNS LEAD TO YOU ... WHOOPS NOW YOU'RE DEAD ZOMG WHO IS THE KILLER?! And I love it to bits for that.
While there are some VERY annoying characters (GAH, Shae, SHUT THE FUCK UP ... Shane, SHUT UP ... Madison ... WTF ... why are two of my least-favorite characters called "Shae" and "Shane" was that intentional?) they are outnumbered by a sizeable (but dwindling, of course) cast of genuinely NICE people, and for most of them you'll feel bad when they die. I could go on for ages about a certain pair of deaths towards the end of the series, but I won't, because it is a massive spoiler. Suffice to say I WEPT and felt awful, but I didn't hate the show for killing off my favorite characters because it was done so very well. THAT is how you handle character death, people. It was almost the end of the show and the characters who'd gone through the most growth and been consistently amusing and adorable throughout the episodes and it looked like they might get away and survive this whole horrible thing ... died. And I didn't write a gigantic angry rant about it or scream or kick things. I cried, and then I thanked the show for hurting me so good.
That's what it really comes down to, this show is well done. It may not be the best thing ever all of the time, and there are points where it's kinda silly or stupid or annoying, but it's always presented in an effective, well-thought-out, or nicely packaged way so even though you might not like the taste you can admire the composition, if that makes any sense. I'm not even covering everything that I liked about this, even, I know I'm leaving stuff out, not just spoilers but more stuff that I simply don't have the time to go into.
So, in the spirit of Halloween, I encourage you to give this show a look. It's really good, only 13 episodes, and well worth a watch.
Someday I'm going to come back to this and do a review of each episode, or a spoilery WAZT about the twists and fake-outs and the final deaths and the ending. If I ever figure out vlogging, this is going on my list of "stuff to review."
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 08:54 am (UTC)HI I'm a little spazzy right now because it's 5 AM. But now I'm thinking that Harper's Island is on Netflix and that I should marathon it tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:05 am (UTC)Yesterday I stayed up until 6:30 am. I don't know why. The first part of my day was PAINFUL. Now I'm fine, but I was intending to go to sleep WAY earlier and then I wanted to get my essay done and then drunk friends were hanging out in the common room and I wanted to chat and they were amusing and then most of them left to get high so I went back to my room and go distracted by the second half of Re-Animator (SUCH a good movie!) and writing this.
Did you guess the ending twist about Wakefield's kid? I DID. AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. :DDDDDD
I didn't! I realized that his kid (once it was established that it wasn't Abby) was one of the main cast, but I thought it was Jimmy. I had NO IDEA it was who it was until the show revealed it to me, and then I was stunned and pleased and shocked and excited and SO SO SCARED.
To be honest, it seemed a bit cliched or something. Him loving Abby and especially the obsession with wanting to live with her without anybody else seemed kinda forced and odd. And the whole business with his parents and his father and stuff. "I am the son of a serial killer and adopted, therefore I shall go mad and kill EVERYBODY!" Yet it was handled and portrayed so masterfully that I can't bring myself to get angry about it ... it just vaguely annoys me, is all. This will require more watching, now that I know the ending, to reexamine my thoughts.
But now I'm thinking that Harper's Island is on Netflix and that I should marathon it tomorrow.
I am so rewatching it (preferably with friends in tow) sometime soon. SO GOOD.
GAH, those final clips of the wedding guests recording video messages all happy and alive ... I was crying. SO PAINFUL. BUT I LOVED IT. IT WAS THE GOOD KIND OF PAIN.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:13 am (UTC)Yep!
I realized that his kid (once it was established that it wasn't Abby) was one of the main cast, but I thought it was Jimmy.
I knew it had to be either him or Jimmy, and I was like 'It's probably Henry' and it WAS. I was so proud of myself.
To be honest, it seemed a bit cliched or something.
Yeah, I can see that.
Yet it was handled and portrayed so masterfully that I can't bring myself to get angry about it ... it just vaguely annoys me, is all.
The show is so well done like that. Yes, it's cliche, but the cliches work. For the most part.
This will require more watching, now that I know the ending, to reexamine my thoughts.
Watching it knowing the ending is an entirely different experience. You really get emotionally invested in things because you KNOW how it ends and you just feel so bad. Like, for Chloe and Cal. I loved them together. And Poor Trish, she just wanted to marry Henry and be happy ;_;
GAH, those final clips of the wedding guests recording video messages all happy and alive ... I was crying. SO PAINFUL. BUT I LOVED IT. IT WAS THE GOOD KIND OF PAIN.
Yesss. SO much good pain.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:29 am (UTC)It was all going so fast at that point so I was all "oh, it's totally Jimmy, she broke his heart and now he wants revenge and he's totally Wakefield's kid, maybe he's been in on this from the original murders" and then suddenly it ... wasn't him. It was Henry. And I was STUNNED and SCARED.
The show is so well done like that. Yes, it's cliche, but the cliches work. For the most part.
Which is why I love it SO MUCH. In lesser hands this would have been so awful. But it was handled masterfully and so instead it KICKED ASS.
Like, for Chloe and Cal. I loved them together.
GOOD GOD, CLOE AND CAL!!!
I loved those characters so much. At first I thought "oh, the randy couple, how original, getting killed in five ... four ... three ... two? One? What? What? Oh, you sneaky devil of a show, you knew what I was going to think so you tricked me!" Of all the characters they had the most growth, I think, over the course of the show. They went from a couple that were together, yes, but seemed like they could break up pretty easily, and then they got engaged and showed that they really did care about each other (like covering Sully in feathers, getting the ring back ... though that was a dick move it was an adorable move too) and fighting and worrying about each other logically, not screaming and failing helplessly at being separated from their other half but working to get back together ...
... and then their deaths. Of course Cal was never going to make it around that fence, not with that bulletwound. And then Chole saying "You can't have me" and FALLING and that SONG and I was sobbing and cheering and punching the air and wanting to point and laugh at Wakefield for having one of his victims look him in the eye and say "fuck you, asshole, I chose my own death" and slip right through his fingers. He looked so angry about that. I was so proud of Chloe.
I've always thought that if I were in one of those horror movie situations with a killer on the lose, especially a supernatural one, and there was no way out, I'd kill myself to prevent them from having the satisfaction of killing me, and prevent all that paranoia and stress and terror. So to see a character do just that was really great on a personal level.
Plus, it was refreshing to have a character, female or not, make that conscious choice. You don't see that often in forms of media.
And Poor Trish, she just wanted to marry Henry and be happy ;_;
I thought she'd be shallow. But she was a real live person. I didn't exactly love her to bits, but I did LIKE her at times and I never hated her. (I was annoyed that she didn't send away her ex soon enough, didn't shove him away and establish clear boundaries, but nobody's perfect.) She really didn't deserve all that awfulness, and you could view significant chunks of the show as "Trish: A Tragedy in Thirteen Episodes" instead of "The Abby Story" or "The Henry Story" or "Loads of People Die on an Island and It Is Sad." It was horrible to watch this lovely person have everything in her life taken away or ruined, from her father to her family situation (her stepmom and brother-in-law) to her friends to her wedding to her FIANCEE to finally her LIFE, but at that point she'd had so much taken away her life was just the straw to break the camel's back. I think if he hadn't stabbed her she'd have died inside anyways. I don't think she'd have had the strength to come back from all that stuff. Which is not to say that she's weak, just that she had the most horrible stuff happen to her over the course of the series.
no subject
Date: 2011-10-30 09:42 am (UTC)They really did. By the end, you really understand that they LOVE each other and were together for a reason.
... and then their deaths. Of course Cal was never going to make it around that fence, not with that bulletwound. And then Chole saying "You can't have me" and FALLING and
Oh god, I was SO SAD. I wanted them to live and have blonde rich snarky babies with good hearts and of course I knew that wouldn't happen but ;_;
and that SONG and I was sobbing and cheering and punching the air
I downloaded that song. It's SO GOOD and so PERFECT for that moment. I wibble every time I hear it.
I was so proud of Chloe.
Me too. She really grew on me as a character.
Plus, it was refreshing to have a character, female or not, make that conscious choice. You don't see that often in forms of media.
Yes. And man, how great are the ladies on this show? PRETTY GREAT.
I thought she'd be shallow. But she was a real live person. I didn't exactly love her to bits, but I did LIKE her at times and I never hated her.
By the end I was a BIG Trish fan and I wibbled SO HARD when she died. Henry being all "I really wanted to give you that wedding" was both touching and kind of cruel and ;_;
I don't think she'd have had the strength to come back from all that stuff.
I don't know. She might have, sometimes people can surprise you. But yeah, so much shit happened to her that I think it would have taken a long time to recover at the very least.
Basically this show gives me ALL THE FEELINGS. Which is weird, because it's basically a horror movie in 13 episodes, but I really cared about the characters. Well played, Harper's Island, Well Played.