2012 TV Spotlight: ABC's The River

I thought I might expand past movie reviews and dabble in the world of television. Considering I have no life and watch a significant amount of TV on a daily basis, when I'm not working or playing XBOX that is. Ha, it all sounds so depressing, but I enjoy it. Anyway, I wanted to comment on the new ABC horror/thriller show "The River". It was brought to us by Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity) and little known film maker Steven Speilberg has his name slapped on here with a producer credit somewhere. It stars Bruce Greenwood, Joe Anderson, Leslie Hope, Eloise Mumford, Paul Blackthorne, and Thomas Kretschmann.

The pilot episode aired on Tuesday, February 7th on ABC. The story follows a documentary crew who treck through the Amazon looking for a famous TV adventurer who went missing about six months prior on a top secret expedition. The documentary crew includes the TV hosts wife and son. Most believe all hope is lost and that the explorer and his crew are long dead, but his wife has other plans. The deeper they follow his path, the more they learn they are not dealing with a simple rescue mission. They encounter strange creatures and mysterious ghost like entities who wreak havoc on the crew.

But there is a gimmick of course. Found footage films are all the rage right now. The Blair Witch Project came out back in 1999 and the whole lost footage scenario was "cool" back then. Then there was a bit of a lull where we didn't see this. Now, we get a few films a year with this trick. Some work, some don't. That's life. TV shows are not new to the documentary style either. There are a few comedies on TV such as "The Office", "Parks & Recreation" and "Modern Family", among others that do this. None of those, however, are as dark as "The River". The show blends found footage with documentary style. The pilot episode focused more on the rescue team then it did on letting us into the footage they discovered upon the abandoned ship.

So does The River live up to the hype? I mean, they plastered "Oren Peli, creator of Paranormal Activity" and "From Executive Producer Steven Speilberg" all over the ads of this show. So you know they were trying to grab our attention and also imply that this was the new "it" show and it's going to be great. So was it? Well I've read a lot of mixed reviews on the show today. While I value all opinions, I have to agree with the people who enjoyed the pilot. I noticed that people who don't care for hand held camera work, don't typically care for shows and movies like this. To them, it seems to distract from the story and the performances, and I can understand that. I however, am completely indifferent towards the gimmick. I will never object to watching something like this based on that fact, and will not hate or like a project based on that. I tend to notice everything else, such as the writing, the acting and the overall production of the work in question.

To me, The River was a fantastic pilot episode and I was totally invested in it from the opening shot. I love the whole idea behind it. This could potentially be a "Freak of the week" type of show where the cast is terrorized by some new mysterious creature and I'm OK with that as long as they still stick to the mythology of the show. The X-Files did this brilliantly for 6 1/2 seasons. I chose to forget the last few seasons of that show. The River is something that could be chalk full of deep mystery. Some people look at this and don't think they can go to far with the story. People said they same thing a few episodes into "Lost". It's possible these days folks. But it's also not hard to fathom that this story could wrap up by the end of the 7 episode run and we get a whole new tale next season. "American Horror Story" is doing this (an amazing TV show by the way). Anyway, I'm enjoying the story so far. They didn't give away to much, but gave me enough to be thirsty for more.

As for the camera work, I thought it was well done. It wasn't even that shaky, so I don't know what people are going all crazy over. Some have mentioned how all the cameras on the boat are so conveniently placed and the audio is so crisp even though they are in the Amazon. If the camera's weren't so conveniently placed, we wouldn't have a very good show would we? Would you like all the camera's to be in more "realistic" and far away spots so that we could not see or hear what is going on? Should there not be a plethora of cameras around so that we only have the same few shots? They explained why there are so many camera's but if your looking for realism in a show about the supernatural, maybe you shouldn't be watching TV. If the unrealistic existence and placement of certain camera's is really the biggest concern, then I don't know what to tell you. Yes, I'm aware they want us to believe this as much as possible and they are the ones who threw the hand held camera gimmick at us. But they are also making a big budget TV show that they don't want to have cancelled, so a few things have to be above the norm.

I apologize for the rant. If you haven't read my reviews on the past, you should know one of by BIGGEST freaking pet peeves is when critics and movie goers throw around words like "implausible", "unrealistic" and "laughably unbelievable" to criticize a movie. To  me, those are just things said by people to make themselves sound smart to explain why they didn't like a movie. Most of the time, those can't be valid reasons, I have to believe that. You are in a theater watching a movie, or you are at home watching TV. You are watching something that already isn't in real life. The beautiful thing about film and television is it lets us immerse ourselves in far out worlds or stories so far from reality that we can forget about our problems, at least for a few hours. I find it funny that people are OK with movies like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings but when a movie about real human beings in a normal present day setting get involved in something out of this world it's completely unbelievable. They are all movies are they not? If you want reality, go watch the news or Jersey Shore. Now, if I'm watching a movie about lawyers and all of a sudden, at the end one of them starts to fly and shoot lasers out of their nose, I might laugh at that. Not for it being implausibly, but because it would be silly.

Wow, I ranted and raved again. Damn, sorry. But it's all relative to my review of The River. These are things people are saying about the show that I find funny or disagree with. But that's the beauty of opinion. We all have them, and should not judge one another for having different ones. I may not agree with people who say these things about film, but I will respect them. This is only one opinion from one man. Back to the show...I loved it. The first hour was perfect set up for the whole season, and by hour two we really got into the freakiness of the show. I hate dolls, I will say that right now. I find them to be scary as well. I don't care if that's funny to you. There is a LOT of attention towards little creepy dolls moving on their own or darting their eyes around and I found it to be quite eerie and unsettling. The far away sounds of a little girl laughing would send a shiver down anyone's spine. Was this the scariest 2 hours of television ever? Eh, no. But I don't get scared that easily...other than the doll thing. It's hard to really put the fear of God into me and give me nightmares at night. That's only because I watch stuff like this all the damn time so I'm used to it.

The show was put together really well and I for one enjoyed the cast, the performances were all really good. However, the characters themselves were all pretty flat and I didn't care for them either way. Didn't hate them, didn't like any of them either. The development wasn't all that special for these guys, which tends to happen in things like this. The focus is more on the story and the scares, and the characters take a back seat. But this has a big cast, and a few of them have some potential big personalities, so I would have liked to see more from that. But we have 6 more episodes left this season, so there is time.

So yes, I liked The River, and I look forward to seeing where it goes next week!