Craig Reviews The River

*SPOILER WARNING*


I came into this series with high hopes that this could end up being a really interesting TV event. I’ve only seen the first Paranormal Activity film, and I enjoyed it greatly, and I seem to be one of the few people out there who isn’t completely sick of the whole found footage gimmick yet, so I was looking forward to seeing what Oren Peli could bring to a horror miniseries. Unfortunately the show does virtually nothing new or exciting; instead it’s an almost-exact carbon copy of Paranormal Activity in every way, except set in a jungle. It’s consistently ridiculous, and often derivative, filled with horror tropes that are already over-used, making for a series that feels stale at best, and is laughable at it’s worst.

 The show centres on the supernatural events that plague the crew of a research ship sent to search for Dr. Emmet Cole, a TV presenter beloved the world over for his popular nature show, who has been missing for several months and is presumed dead. On board the ship are Cole’s wife and son, Tess and Lincoln, the daughter of Cole’s long-time cameraman, Lena, as well as members of the crew who worked with him on his TV show. The search was sparked when Cole’s distress beacon was detected, and is being paid for by the TV network, on the condition that they are allowed to film everything that happens. But when the crew enters a mythical part of the Amazon known as La Boiuna, against the advice of the crew’s resident ghost whisperer Jahel, things start to go awry.

What follows, for the first five episodes at least, is a rather disappointing ‘monster of the week’ style of show, and clearly none of these characters have ever seen a horror movie in their lives, because it’s not even a very intelligent one. Episode six left me with some short-lived hope that the series could end on a high note, as we get to see found footage within our found footage, and find out a lot more about the previously mysterious character that is Dr. Emmet Cole. This episode was perfectly paced, and interesting to watch, though it was notably lacking in scares, and the episode’s cliffhanger ending seemed to be leading up to an interesting finale. Unfortunately episodes seven and eight prove to be the worst offenders of the lot, with episode seven featuring an abandoned research facility filled with very vaguely explained zombies, that is so similar to the movie ‘[Rec]’ that it at times borders on plagiarism. This episode also pushes the found footage gimmick to it’s absolute limit, with slightly ridiculous scenarios including Lincoln conveniently being filmed by a classmate when he receives a call telling him that his father is missing. Scenes such as this were not only completely unnecessary in the first place, but they make you so aware of the found footage concept that it stops being at all believable, though that was never much of a problem in this particular case anyway. Episode eight returns to the ship, with a rescued Emmet in tow, and things are briefly interesting here when Lincoln is shot by someone else on the boat, but the possession storyline that follows has been done to death in many other horror movies and gets boring very fast. The series ends with the ship presumably stuck on La Boiuna for all eternity, all I can say is I hope it stays that way, as I can’t think of any show in recent memory that is less deserving of a second season.

There's magic out there. Magic apparently meaning 'things that want to kill you' in this case...

When the first five episodes of your eight episode miniseries are basically equivalent to filler, then there’s definitely a problem. Maybe with fewer episodes this could have been an interesting story, but the material is stretched so thin here, and the final two episodes are such clichéd horror movie fare that you can’t help but leave with the impression that everyone involved just stopped caring. Adding to this are the show’s many attempts at creating some mystery. Perhaps it’s just all that jungle scenery, but it seemed to me that the show was trying to do it’s best Lost impersonation, throwing in a bunch of mysterious questions for the audience. Unfortunately, unlike Lost (well, for the most part at least!) by the time the credits roll on the last episode of The River, absolutely none of these mysteries have been explained. What is the mark on Lena’s neck and what does it mean? Just who was Kurt working for and why was his wife at the research facility? Hopefully everybody else watching cared as little as I did, because it doesn’t look like any of those mysteries are ever going to get resolved.

Possibly the biggest flaw of the series is it’s cast of characters, who are easily some of the most two-dimensional I’ve ever come across. Easily the most interesting character is Emmet Cole, and that’s largely because for the first five episodes we barely see him. Unfortunately, once the enigma is revealed a bit more he becomes only a little less boring than everyone else there. The show tries to create some conflict, with Lincoln’s strained relationship with his father, Lena’s ulterior motives for being on the ship, and Clark’s feelings for Tess, but it all falls a little flat. The cast is simply too big for any of the characters to really strike out and develop within the shows 320 minute runtime. I had assumed that some of the more superfluous characters would end up dying early on, but that’s actually a pretty rare occurrence in the show, and as such we end up knowing more about the cameraman (he’s scared of caves and gay apparently) than we know about a lot of the more important characters. Thus, when the show adds a character, and then proceeds to try and stoke up some kind of love triangle between Lena, Lincoln and the new guy out of nowhere, it frankly feels a little insulting. Special mention has to go to Tess who, simply put, is just the most irritating character ever. While the rest of the cast are not especially smart when it comes to walking into danger, Tess’ reaction is almost always to run towards it shouting “It’s Emmett, it’s Emmett!”, and to top it all off she’s a preachy bitch too. In episode seven the cast come across Rabbit, a young girl who joined Emmett on the expedition. I actually found Rabbit to be one of the more interesting characters on the show, she features prominently in episode six before abandoning Emmett in the middle of the jungle, after finally realising that he’s crazy and everyone around him is getting killed. After the group find and save her in episode 7 Tess proceeds to give Rabbit a telling off as if she’s the terrible person in this scenario, apparently failing to realise just how many people her husband got killed. Of course, almost immediately afterwards Rabbit gets torn to pieces by a zombie that somehow magically appeared on the ship, and absolutely nobody on the ship cares. Honestly, I don’t know how this show got written THIS badly!

There’s not a whole lot more to say really, except that this show fails on almost every count. It’s very rarely scary, it’s definitely not entertaining, and there’s nothing interesting about it. If you’re looking for bad examples of horror stereotypes then this is the show for you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Otherwise I’d suggest steering well clear, this show will only frustrate and confuse. If you’re really desperate for a horror TV show then The Walking Dead would like to say hello.