The River

This 8 episode T.V series aired last year however I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago stumbling across a trailer.  The show was created by Oren Peli and Michael Perry of Paranormal Activity fame and co-produced by Steven Spielberg (amongst others).   Looking back a few years, about the closest thing I can remember to a horror series was the X-Files but we seem to be getting quite spoiled with shows like 'The Walking Dead', 'American Horror Story' and now out of the blue this single season of 'The River'!

The show follows a search & rescue team led by Tess Cole up the Amazon river attempting to find her husband, Dr Emmet Cole who went missing while shooting the families adventure T.V show - The Undiscovered Country.  The producer of the show is happy to pay for the trip provided he can film everything.  The boat is hooked up with a large number of mounted camera's plus two dedicated camera men following the action and it is through this footage that the entire story is told.

'The River' has so much potential.  The amazon river and jungle is such an interesting, unknown and creepy setting for a horror story that it does half the work for you.  Unfortunately after the final episode I couldn't help but think about all of the things these guys could have done to turn a good show into a great one.

Let's concentrate on the positives first.  Firstly as you probably know by now I am a big fan of the found footage style when it is done right (well edited and not too much shaky cam).   The style worked really well for this show contrasting the claustrophobic feeling on the boat with the huge unknown jungle.  The combination of the mounted and held camera's was great to provide more shot variety and also allow the story to move out into the jungle.  I felt it was slightly over edited but generally production was pretty damn well done.

I really enjoyed the core story and character development as well.  There was a lot of history given to the characters within each episode and by the end a full picture had been painted.   The tone is set about 20 minutes into the first episode going straight into a supernatural encounter and showing that basically anything goes.  To help track down Emmet they must search through a lot of recorded footage from the missing crew and I felt this added a nice element being able to build tension from watching the prior events unfolding whilst experiencing the current as well.

This could have been such an incredible show but unfortunately a few things really let it down.  Firstly and very importantly was the acting.   It wasn't terrible, but I think it's safe to say that no one is winning any awards.   When considering each character separately, nobody really stuck out too bad, just as a whole there were parts it detracted from the experience. Bigger budget there and who knows.

The other main issue is I feel they went too over the top with the variety of horror 'encounters'.  The core story was excellent and would have easily provided 8 episodes of content.  Instead they tried to pack too much in and make each episode into it's own unique segment.  (The zombies were the last straw).   There were some fantastic scene's in the jungle with the native tribesman and local legends & ghost stories - I would have just loved to see the entire 8 episodes really flesh this out and link it all back to the Dr.

If I was to rate this on quality alone it would probably get a 7 however given the incredible potential of the story and setting I can't help feel they didn't really do it justice in the end.   That said though, if you're a horror fan definitely check it out.

6/10

IMDB Info