When I first saw the trailer for The River last year I wasn't very impressed. After re-watching it earlier this year it didn't look too bad and I decided that it had promise. Co-created by Oren Peli of Paranormal Activity fame and Micheal R. Perry, who has written for and produced such shows as American Gothic, Law & Order: SVU, The Guardian and The Dead Zone, it was also boasts Steven Spielberg as an executive producer. Given that he was producing this at the same time as he was producing Terra Nova and Smash and directing War Horse that doesn't mean very much.
The basic premise is this: world-renowned naturalist Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood) is the presenter of The Undiscovered Country, a Steve Irwin-type show where he travels the world with his family searching out rare species and marvelling at the "magic" of nature. He disappears whilst on a trip down the Amazon with just his cameraman Russ Landry for company. After an exhaustive six-month search, the effort is called off and he is declared legally dead. His wife, Tess (Leslie Hope), refuses to give up and strikes a deal with TV executive Clark Quitely (Paul Blackthorne), the former producer of Cole's show - she will mount a rescue bid which will be paid for by the network in return for the entire expedition being filmed for broadcast. There is one catch - the expedition can only go ahead if Tess can convince their son Lincoln (Joe Anderson) to come along as well. He initially refuses, having had a distant and strained relationship with his often-absent father and has accepted his death. When his mother reveals that his emergency beacon has been activated, Lincoln agrees to go. Tess and Lincoln are joined by Clark; Lena Landry (Eloise Mumford), the daughter of cameraman Russ and childhood friend of Lincoln; Cole's long-time mechanic Emilio Valenzuela (Daniel Zacapa) and his daughter Jahel (Paulina Gaitan); mercenary and private security man Kurt Brynildson (Thomas Kretschmann) and cameramen A.J. Poulain (Shaun Parkes) and Sammy Kirsch (Jeff Galfer).
The first episode of The River suffers from two main problems. The first is pacing. In exactly two minutes and twenty seconds, Lincoln Cole goes from drinking alone in a bar having accepted his father's death to being confronted by his mother and Clark with two cameras shoved in his face to being on board a boat in the middle of the Amazon. Three minutes later, they find Cole's emergency beacon attached to a cage at the bottom of the river and five minutes after that they've found his abandoned boat, The Magus. When they make the classic horror movie mistake of opening the door that's welded shut from the outside (how stupid are these people?) I couldn't care less if any of them were brutally butchered to death. The whole thing has been rushed along so much that there has been no time taken to develop any of the characters and what little exposition there is is badly written and deeply contrived. After getting the door open, they open a wooden box and unleash the Black Smoke monster from Lost.
Apparently, it's some sort of soul sent back from Hell that needs blood and can only be trapped in the wooden box. Sounds like a vampire in cloud form. The cloud kills the character who's had the least amount of screen time, other cameraman Sammy and cuts the lifeboats loose leaving the remaining characters to try and figure out how to trap it again and how to get The Magus patched up again so they can get the hell out of there.
The second main problem with The River is that it's too many things at once. It's a paranormal, supernatural, found footage horror/thriller/action adventure series. The found footage aspect in particular detracts from the show. For example, any time a character swears, they're bleeped. It's really distracting more than anything else and makes it seem more like a reality show. The technique from Paranormal Activity of having the clock in the bottom right-hand corner speed up and then slow back down again is borrowed and remains utterly pointless.
The second episode features the mechanic's daughter, Jahel, more prominently. In the last episode she told them the story of the black cloud vampire thing and in this episode she has an insect fly into her mouth which allows Emmet to communicate through her. The bulk of the team head inland to look for Cole and find an old British colonial graveyard and a tree with dolls hanging from it. The dolls are a bit creepy and although any horror reference to dolls will draw comparisons with Chucky, they are handled well enough to avoid becoming too silly. The plot holes and inconsistencies take care of that just fine.
Characters are developed more and producer Clark and private security man Kurt are clearly being set up as the bad guys. The dialogue's still very clunky and lead actor Joe Anderson is quite stiff, especially in the scenes he shares with love interest Lena. It's an improvement on a shoddy first episode, but not by much. The series is only 8 episodes so I'm going to commit to watching the remaining 6, even if they get much worse.
Episode 1: 4 out of 10.
Episode 2: 5 out of 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment