With Steven Spielberg dropping his name into television like he's in a competition with J, J. Abrams, he's bound to come out with his fair share of both hits and misses. Terra Nova, for example, fell dramatically short of the expectations I had after watching the summer smash, Falling Skies. Having first seen previews for The River shortly after Christmas, I didn't have the time to allow excitement and anticipation to set in. Or, conversely, I didn't have time to ruin the show for myself like in the ten months that I waited for Alcatraz.
Discovering that the series was co-created by Oren Peli and Michael Perry -- the gents behind the Paranormal Activity film trilogy -- didn't faze me, as the previews made it clear that the show would also be presented through the "found footage" medium. I didn't think that I had the patience to endure the two-hour premiere in that sort of documentary format, never mind a season, or - knock on wood - a long-running series, but I did. Twice.
The River begins with a heartfelt remembrance of Dr. Emmett Cole (Bruce Greenwood), introducing us to his family and his celebrated television show, "The Undiscovered Country." Six months after Dr. Cole's mysterious disappearance, his wife Tess (Leslie Hope) picks up the signal from his private distress beacon and acquires funding from the show's producers to execute a rescue mission into the Amazon - all for the viewing pleasure of the mass media. Tess recruits her son Lincoln (Joe Anderson) to accompany her, along with Emmett's old crew, who - as it gradually becomes clear - were left behind for their own protection.
The rescue team is ultimately made up of the show's producer, a cameraman, a mechanic, a mercenary, and the ship's mechanic and his daughter. There's also the sexy Lena (Eloise Mumford), the daughter of a missing crewman on Dr Cole's trek, who catches up with the team just before they penetrate the unmapped depths of the rainforest. Despite the smaller cast, the shots and angles captured as the cameras are passed around and set up as they traverse the Amazonian jungle sometimes make you forget that, for all intents and purposes, the cast is the crew. And for having to multi-task, they do a fine job of pulling off both roles in the first two hours (ninety minutes if you don't count commercials.)
Dr. Cole's innocuous catchphrase, "There's magic out there," holds a different meaning to each of the different crewmembers, but when they pass the border of the untranslatable, unmapped region of the rainforest, it becomes clear that Emmett's words bear truth to a deeper conviction. Vengeful spirits, water-walking, and the manipulation of fire are just a small taste of the bizarreness that the renowned naturalist went looking for, and which has invariably found him, his family, and their team of ragtag rescuers.
Honestly, the only qualm I can raise at this point is Spielberg's go-to archetype -- the teenage girl who happens to know what's going on at all freaking times. In this case, there are two. The mechanic's daughter, Jahel, is keenly in-tune with the spirit world, and is bound to act as a sort of guide through the mysterious mystiques they encounter, and Lena seems to know more about Dr. Cole than his son and wife combined - just like the girl with boundless knowledge of physics in Terra Nova, and just like the girl who happens to have experience with aliens and their weaknesses in Falling Skies. (If you want to go way back, he did the same thing with Dakota Fanning's alien-human hybrid, Allie, in the mini-series Taken ten years ago).
I was plesantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the first two episodes overall.
But I'm a long way away, I think, from being locked in on The River for the duration.
A couple quibbles:
* The quirkly camera effects can be cool and interesting at times, but they really have to watch it over overdoing it, especially when it's a vantage point that's clearly not or questionably the "found footage" concept that the show is based on.
* The wandering through the woods routine, only to end up back by the dolls, was awfully Blair Witch Project-esque. Very awfully.
* We're in the jungle where creepy stuff is going on. Now we're by trees with thousands of dolls are strung up all over the joint. Perfect place to camp out!
The running with cameras definitely leaves me disoriented, but I think the misleading/questionable shots you mentioned are just done under the guise of artistic license. Magic, amirite? :P
Setting up camp at the spirit tree felt tongue in cheek to me, especially when the producer tells the cameraman to "milk it" - I think the setting was just obviously convenient as far as presenting an episode, and they acknowledge that with a wink.
Well you know, now that I think about it, I guess they are still getting away with everything as "found footage" because of all of the cameras theoretically stowed around the magus (that they all still magically work after the boat being stuck in the amazon for months is another story). Realized that during the flashbacks even, we might still be watching "found" footage such as when Cole sees the mark on the girl's neck in the late '80s.