Hosting a dinner party with literary geniuses as guests sounds like a dream come true… discovering that they’re all getting killed off one by one is more of a nightmare, but exactly the case for Edgar Allen Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party. This YouTube series, created by Shipwrecked, started as a Kickstarter project back in February 2016, and its season finale aired on Halloween. So you can venture a guess as to what I was doing on All Hallow’s Eve…
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The Persaud siblings started their characterizations as Edgar Allen Poe (Sean Persaud) and Lenore the Lady Ghost (Sinead Persaud) in their series A Tell-Tale Vlog. Somehow, despite Poe’s severe social awkwardness, he has managed to invite authors such as Ernest Hemingway (Joey Richter), Oscar Wilde (Tom DeTrinis), Charlotte Brontë (Ashley Clements), and… Emma Dickens (Sarah Grace Hart) or whoever. Of course, a murder mystery party wouldn’t be complete without Constables Jim and Jimmy (Jim O’Heir of Parks and Recreation, and Jimmy Wong) checking in on the mayhem.
This web series has got to be one of the dweebiest, most wonderful concepts I’ve encountered in my life. Literature typically is limited to the page, but seeing appreciation for literary artists on the screen is almost too much to bear. It’s hard to imagine, at times, that there are other people out there who are equally obsessed with books and authors and poetry. This series is a sort of fan-fiction of the authors, imagining how writers and poets would have interacted with their contemporaries. It’s like Midnight in Paris, except it’s actually good.
The episodes are chocked full with literary references, terrible puns (my favorite), boisterous comedy, and drama. While watching the series with friends, we definitely were kept in suspense ‘til the very end, unsure if new characters would make appearances, or if deceased characters were truly dead. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say that the rugged alcoholic Hemingway would be it (that’s probably the first and only time I will compliment Hemingway).
The location is extravagant and absolutely perfect. The costumes and hair are beautiful period pieces. The color edit to the film gives it an eerie candlelit ambiance. The music is a subtle but strong foundation to the story. The actors are obviously dedicated to their roles, and I can barely imagine them outside of character.
After watching Mary Kate Wiles’s (Annabel Lee) behind-the-scenes video in which she vlogs about the YouTube series, it’s easy to forget that this was an indie production. The budget was only $72,141, and when taking into account all of the actors, the location, the crew, and many other fine details, this is an amazing feat. As someone who works with an out-of-my-own-pocket budget for my own films, who works with actors around their college class schedules, I’m in awe of how dedicatedly this production worked towards their passion project.
I really do feel like this web series is a staple for the online literary community – as big as the first person who decided that they were going to vlog about books they recently read. The series deserves so much more love and support than what it currently has. My hope is that you’ll watch the first episode and follow the series through to the end, appreciating the representations of our beloved eighteen hundreds artists and the production team who created them.
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