So after my screening of Safe House last night I journeyed home to watch ABC’s two-hour premiere of “The River“. After laying out my hopes for it yesterday I wondered if I would be able to give it a fair shake or if I was expecting too much. As it turns out, it’s not too bad and I will continue watching, but there are definite causes for concern.
First off, for those that didn’t watch or don’t know what it’s about, the big selling point is that it comes from Paranormal Activity writer/director Oren Peli who helped come up with the story with Paranormal Activity 2 screenwriter Michael R. Perry, Michael Green (Green Lantern) and Zack Estrin (“Prison Break”, “Tru Calling”). As you would expect from such a teaming, it’s roots in the “found footage” style of story-telling are definitely there, but it all seems a bit arbitrary, but more on that in a second.
The story centers on the idea that famed television adventurer, Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood), went missing in the Amazon six months ago and was since been presumed dead. However, his location beacon just fired back up and now his family and a television crew, from the same network that aired his adventure show, are headed into the jungle to find him.
The search and rescue party includes Emmet’s wife Tess (Leslie Hope) and his son Lincoln (Joe Anderson) who are joined by Emmet’s longtime boat mechanic, Emilio (Daniel Zacapa), and Emilio’s capable daughter Jahel (Paulina Gaitan); the network man, Clark (Paul Blackthorne); lead camera man A.J. (Shaun Parkes); the weapons man; Kurt (Thomas Kretschmann); and family friend and a love interest for Lincoln named Lena (Eloise Mumford).
This group navigates their way through the Amazon and eventually comes across Emmet’s ship, which is where things begin to pick up and it’s made quite clear this show is about something supernatural. The first scary occurrence involves some sort of black cloud looking demon that feeds off your blood and haunts the crew for the first hour of the premiere episode while another scare inducing plot device is conjured up for episode two.
If anything, the first hour is Blair Witch-inspired while the second hour is clearly all Paranormal Activity. Just watch the clip included here as established surveillance cameras in the trees fast forward through the night to the scary parts and one of the characters is slowly dragged out of his tent and eventually thrown into the jungle.
The gimmicky camerawork that works so well in the Paranormal franchise, sadly, doesn’t work here for a multitude of reasons. First is that they don’t commit to it. Not only is the show presented through surveillance cameras on the ship and A.J.’s camera, sometimes the show is presented from a camera independent of the production, which eliminates any of the intimacy the first person aspect is meant for. Not only that, the production value is seriously lacking. Peli spent $15,000 making the first Paranormal Activity film and his feature was far more convincing than this show, which is almost silly in the way about 30% of it is presented with a glossy HD image with CCTV scan lines processed into the image. It doesn’t just look fake, it is fake.
I also don’t know why you present the show as a television production and then show it from camera angles that are clearly not part of the production. In one instance the surveillance camera would have needed to be in the river to get the angle it was shooting, yet, there’s the shot, processed scan lines on it and all.
The show is something of a “Lost” meets Blair Witch Project meets Paranormal Activity. The mystery found in “Lost” is there as Emmet’s disappearance has something to do with the uncharted land he’s wandered in on, but beyond that a necklace he was given in the past and a tattoo on Lena’s neck suggest Emmet has been knee deep in this stuff for years. Then it brings in the “lost in the wilderness” aspect of Blair Witch and its particular shooting style and the clear influence of the Paranormal Activity franchise.
One major red flag for me were the flashback sequences as they can only make the plot more convoluted and on top of that it appears the goal will be to simply bring to light one new scare each episode while only forwarding the plot in infinitesimal amounts each week.
We already know Jahel is the spiritual expert, Clark is there for the TV show, the son and father didn’t have a great relationship, Tess cheated on Emmet, Lena is tied to this much more than maybe even she knows and Kurt is there protecting whatever the “Source” is for some outside entity. Each of these little things can become the focus of any episode, which would only drag the mystery on longer to the point you reach so many episodes and just don’t care any longer.
Peli essentially confirmed what I’ve just said, telling the New York Daily News, “Every episode stands on its own as a mini horror movie” and that they “do have a roadmap so we know where we’re going to be going on future seasons.”
That’s fine and dandy, and I hope that roadmap doesn’t intend to make this too long of a journey because I feel they can only keep their audience so long with what they did for the first two episodes. Had they only started with just the first half of this premiere episode, it certainly wouldn’t have been enough to keep audience attention.
I still have my DVR set to record next Tuesday’s episode. If you weren’t able to watch the first two episodes you can begin right here with “Magus” and then watch episode two, “Marbeley,” right here. I’m sorry, I’m not sure if those links are able to be played outside of the United States, but if you saw it I would love to read your thoughts in the comments below.
