Plot Summary
The powerful Trisk family funs the influence ISLE News Network, and they are headed up by the patriarch Daniel Trisk. However, when he has a sudden stroke on air, the entire empire is threatened. Victoria Trisk, wife of Daniel, wields her power over the family while her husband lays in a coma. Everyone in the family has a secret to guard, and each one of them wants the upper hand in the ISLE News Network business. Will they remember their Christian faith and learn what really matters in the midst of all their conspiracies?
Production Quality (1 point)
Though there are attempts at making this ‘hope opera’ series a good production, many of them fall flat. Beginning with a disorienting opening sequence and continuing with time and location captions, this series commits quite a few errors. Though location footage is excellent, we never see the characters go to any of those places and instead are forced to watch them awkwardly stand around in cheap and limited indoor sets and in front of painfully obvious green screens. Issues like these seem to suggest the PureFlix team didn’t know what they were doing with this series, even though video quality, camera work, and audio quality are fine. The soundtrack is mostly generic, and there is a lot of awkward editing throughout, including lingering scenes and fadeouts. Unfortunately, a lot of this series’ production is a cover for shortcuts and cheaply done work.
Plot and Storyline Quality (.5 point)
This ‘hope opera’ also commits pretty much all of the clichés that exist in the severely limited genre of soap operas. Everything is overly dramatic for no reason, and every conflict seems forced and trumped up, as well as the premise itself. It feels like this series exists in some alternate world, like a child’s play world, rather than the real world. Most, if not all, of the characters are annoying and impressed with themselves as most of their dialogue is filled with information dumps of things that happened off screen. For that matter, there is a lot of talk about these characters doing media work, but we rarely see any of it. The Christian themes therein are extremely forced and plastic; however, near the end of this season, things take a sudden turn towards remotely interesting rather than the previous fingernails-in-the-chalkboard style they were going for. Unfortunately, this is too little too late as too many loose ends and unnecessary subplots are introduced in the latter half of the season. Though there are some interesting attempts at creating flawed characters, it’s just not enough to save this series from itself.
Acting Quality (1 point)
The cast of Hilton Head Island is perhaps among the most plastic-looking and fake-looking we have ever seen, including Hallmark casts. The makeup work in this film is freakishly awful and out of place. Besides this pageantry, as previously mentioned, cast members stand around awkwardly like they don’t know what to do. Their line delivery is unnatural and stilted, while emotions are very wooden and forced. A lot of the time, they are trying way too hard, especially in scenes that are supposed to have high emotion. However, there is some improvement noted throughout that keeps this section from being zero. As a side note, why did Bradley Dorsey choose this mess to restart his acting career with?
Continuity Quality (1 point)
Most of the time, episodes break and transition in the oddest ways. Also, the same old transition sequences are used over and over again between scenes. Though there are some attempts at character backstory, many concepts tend to recycle and repeat themselves throughout this series. There are also way too many subplots going on for any hope of organization to exist.
Conclusion
Once again, PureFlix tries to breach new territory in the Christian entertainment world, and once again, it’s a swing and a miss. We definitely need a series that has intrigue, conspiracy, and flawed characters with no clear heroes, but this is not the way to do it. The soap opera mentality is doomed to failure from the start, and the plastic Christian message of this series is laughable, not to mention the utter pageantry embarrassment that this cast is. Better luck next time, PureFlix.
Final Rating: 3.5 out of 14 points
Box Office Revolution 