“My name is Vicki Burke. I am on a journey to Ragged Isle, an island that lies twenty-one lonely miles from the coast of Maine and is the farthest east people live from that shore. A reunion with my brother and a chance meeting will change my life forever, leading me down a path of dark and dangerous secrets. The island is drawing near, this lonely place where I will face death and find love – both for the first time.”
Thus commences the first season of the supernatural web series Ragged Isle. Filmed in Maine, the series contains scenic shots of the picturesque landscape and contains a lyrical musical score that is sometimes soft and calm, while other times brooding and haunting. Underneath these tranquil sights and sounds, however, lies a darker community filled with mysterious deaths, hidden secrets and a story of forbidden love that ended in tragedy decades earlier.
The narrative begins the night of the aforementioned Vicki Burke’s (Meghan Benton) arrival on Ragged Isle, when her brother Eric (Michael Dix Thomas) and three friends set sail to check their lobster traps off the northern tip of the island. One of them – Mac Lee (Dominic Lavoie) – falls into the water, and while his colleagues are able to retrieve him, Mac’s demeanor is not the same as it was beforehand.
Mac Lee is found dead the next day, an apparent drowning victim even though his body is nowhere near the ocean. Another member of the fishermen quartet is likewise discovered in a similar fashion, adding to the mystery and testing the investigative skills of Sheriff Rick Dalton (Rick Dalton) and “Deputy Dan” Therrien (Erik Moody), his second-in-command.
Ragged Isle hints that the answer to its central mystery rests in the supernatural realm of a ghost driven by the need for revenge. “Haven’t you ever heard the story of what happened at the old sardine plant?” tavern owner Rachel Moody (April Joy Purinton) rhetorically asks Sheriff Dalton. “The plant had two owners – Wilbur Henson and George Bridges. Bridges fell in love with a factory worker, Emma Dobson. Henson threatened to dissolve the whole partnership if they didn’t stop seeing each other. Bridges came from money, Dobson didn’t. Henson said it made the company look bad. He may have had other reasons. People said that Henson was in love with Emma himself, and one night he caught George and Emma kissing in the office in the factory. Went crazy with jealousy. He barricaded the doors, burned the place down to the ground. Set off a forest fire, burned the whole northern tip of the island. It was so hot, they never even found the remains.”
The tranquil small town setting, unexplained mysterious deaths and elements of the supernatural brings to mind the classic ABC television series Twin Peaks, and the first season of Ragged Isle does indeed contain a similar texture with its slow-but-steady pace and effective use of mood and atmosphere. The David Lynch-created drama was populated with an assortment of quirky characters, and while Ragged Isle does not contain the same off-beat humor, it is an effective companion piece nonetheless.
Ragged Isle consists of three seasons and like all good trilogies, each “volume” contain a specific focus that gives a standalone quality while likewise adding to the overall mystery. Whereas season one features a darker undertone that utilizes the internal forests and surrounding sea, effectively conjuring the feeling of impending doom, for instance, season two has an overall brighter quality with more daylight and sweeping scenes of the Maine landscape.
The sophomore effort is also more akin to another classic sci-fi television series, The X-Files, as opposed to Twin Peaks. It seems that the events on Ragged Isle have drawn the attention of the US government and teams of Homeland Security agents descend upon the small enclave during the initial episode of the season. “This is a potential terrorist incident involving the use of a biological weapon,” Agent Allison Thorne (Kathryn Perry) declares upon her arrival to the island. “Have you ever heard of a disease that transmits instantly by touch and causes immediate death, death that simulates the effects of drowning?”
Sheriff Dalton, however, has a different theory and enlists the aid of Dr. Brian Hoffman (Greg Tulonen) of the Maine Center for Disease Control in his own investigation. “I’ve been in the sheriff’s business a long time,” Dalton explains to Hoffman. “I hear things. You’re supposed to be someone who doesn’t always play by the rules. Someone who investigates odd occurrences.”
The characterization of Dr. Hoffman immediately evokes similarities with Fox Mulder of The X-Files, an FBI agent who could likewise think outside the box while investigating his own cases that were filled with “odd occurrences.” But while The X-Files was ostensibly about fellow FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigating the supernatural, it also contained an overarching mythology surrounding a government conspiracy regarding the existence of extraterrestrials. Although there are no aliens on Ragged Isle, the web series contains its own conspiracy that is likewise more fully explored during season two.
Vicki Burke and Ragged Isle resident Paul Soucey (Ian Carlson), for instance, share a determination to uncover the truth surrounding recent events on the island. Their investigation leads them to a group of the more prominent members of the close-knit community, including businessman Harrison Shaw (Todd Manter), newspaper publisher Vance Trundle (Denis Fontaine), successful novelist Gertie Kendrick (Suzanne Rankin) and council member Rose Fuller (Beth Saufler).
“All rich, inherited from mentors who had no families, and none of them have families either,” Paul Soucey explains to Vicki Burke in regards to the aforementioned quartet. “No wives, no husbands, no daughters, no sons. But all of them have protégés.” A meeting between three of these elite residents of the island, meanwhile, gives added focus to the overall Ragged Isle mythology, and in effect declares that the web series is more than mere ghost story.
“What does this all mean?” Burke later asks Soucey. “What are we dealing with? A cult, a secret society, what?” Suffice it to say, the answer lies in the same supernatural realm that Ragged Isle has already established for itself.
“Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the strange things I look into as part of my ‘hobby’ turn out to be perfectly mundane,” Dr. Brian Hoffman tells Sheriff Rick Dodson. “Lies, hoaxes, local legends. I’ve developed a very skeptical gut when it comes to unexplained mysteries. My gut is telling me that what you have here is part of the point-zero one percent.”
While science fiction may be a popular genre, not every new creation necessarily stands up to the classics of the past. But just as the mystery of Ragged Isle falls into the small percentage of actual unexplained occurrences, so it is with Ragged Isle itself as the web series can truly be considered a successful and worthy entry into the realm of the supernatural.
Anthony Letizia