'The River,'
get out your waders
ABC paranormal drama, set in the Amazon jungle, is implausible
By Tom Conroy
Feb 7, 2012
The “found footage” gimmick, claiming that a fictional movie is pieced together from documentary or home-movie footage, has many uses. It can reveal the filmmakers’ ingenuity in overcoming their self-imposed limitations. It can provide dramatic irony, since the characters in such stories are almost always presumed missing or dead. And it lets the filmmakers get away with cheap video cameras, bad lighting, minimal makeup and shaky camerawork, making it ideal for such low-budget films as “The Blair Witch Project” and “Paranormal Activity.”
ABC’s new drama series “The River,” supposedly constructed from the video footage left behind by a rescue mission on the Amazon, fails to take advantage of the gimmick in any of the ways mentioned above. Basically a haunted-house story set in the great outdoors, it’s too grim for kids and too silly for grown-ups.
Premiering tonight at 9 with two episodes, both of which were made available for review, “The River” starts with clips from a long-running nature show called “The Undiscovered Country With Dr. Emmet Cole,” which featured Cole (Bruce Greenwood), his wife, Tess (Leslie Hope), and their son, Lincoln (Joe Anderson). On a voyage up the Amazon without Tess and Lincoln, Emmet and his crew have vanished mysteriously.
Although Emmet is officially declared dead, Tess persuades Lincoln to join her on a search that is being financed by their old network, with the stipulation that it can be filmed by a crew led by Emmet’s former producer Clark (Paul Blackthorne). They’re joined by Lena (Eloise Mumford), whose father, a cameraman, disappeared along with Emmet. She and Lincoln were childhood friends.
The last person to communicate with Emmet, Lena leads the group up the river to an uncharted area called the Boiúna. Jahel (Paulina Gaitán), their mechanic’s paranormally sensitive daughter, says, according to the subtitles, “We cannot go there. It is [untranslatable].”
That’s the first of many instances of [balderdash]. After the expedition finds Emmet’s boat, Lena uncovers a trove of recent videos that suggest that Emmet was speaking literally when he used his old catch phrase, “There’s magic out there.” But the rescuers also unleash a sinister force that may put their lives in danger.
Like most paranormal shows since “The X-Files,” “The River” appears likely to have two elements driving its plots: an overarching mystery that will be revealed in dribs and drabs over the show’s lifetime (known to aficionados as the show’s “mythology”) and nemeses that will attack and be dispatched each episode (which “X-Files” fans call “the freak of the week”).
Once we’ve been led to accept the premise that supernatural things are happening in the Amazonian jungle, the actual circumstances of Emmet’s disappearance become less interesting, especially after it’s suggested that he may have discovered some cosmic source of power, à la “Lost.”
On a more mundane note, we get hints that Tess and Clark had an affair. Since Clark is an unusually smarmy and unappealing character, this makes us lose more than the usual amount of respect for Tess.
The possible love interest between Lena and Lincoln would be more interesting if he weren’t so whiny. It’s hard to root for an adult hero with daddy issues.
The first two episodes spend so much time introducing and explaining their freaks that the dispatching feels perfunctory. The second boasts some creepy visuals involving dolls suspended from trees, but after a while, the sight becomes slightly ludicrous.
Other unintentionally funny elements include an evil spirit that communicates via bloody scratches and a scene of possession by dragonfly.
The show’s distinguishing element, the found footage, loses its appeal quickly. This is odd because one of its creators and executive producers, Oren Peli, was the director of “Paranormal Activity.” But that film made a virtue of long tripod shots. This series, like “The Office” and many other mockumentaries, has an implausibly copious amount of footage, taken from all angles.
It turns out that Emmet’s boat is as filled with surveillance cameras as the “Big Brother” house. At some points, either we’re supposed to believe that two cameramen are wasting film or disc space shooting a random conversation, or the director is hoping we won’t notice. Although reality TV cameramen are known for keeping their cameras going no matter what happens, it’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t stop when running for their lives.
But no moment in either of the first two episodes stands out as being particularly jarring or ironic because of the documentary premise. And the show looks as expensive as any conventionally shot drama.
One could imagine “The River” working if it were aimed at younger viewers, with a teenaged Lincoln and Lena and the depressing adult issues removed. As is, “The River” is leaving its cast and its viewers up a creek.
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