The River Review 1.01/1.02 - 'Magus/Marbeley'

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 02.08.2012

From the minds of Paranormal Activity and the assistance of Steven Spielberg comes ABC's new "found footage" horror series. But do the first two episodes indicate that this is a river worth heading down? 411's Jeremy Thomas checks in with his full review!

The 2011-2012 season is half-over and there have been a ton of winners and losers. Some, like 2 Broke Girls and Grimm, have become surprising successes while others like New Girl have become entirely unsurprising successes, at least given the hype and critical acclaim. Others have become casualties such as Charlie's Angels, Pan Am, The Firm and (thankfully, for me) The Playboy Club. The best thing about these failures, other than the fact that it has meant the merciful end of some terrible to mediocre hours of television, is that it opens the way for the ever-anticipated mid-season replacements. NBC and ABC have respectively been hyping Smash and The River up the wazoo. Don't worry; Smash isn't exactly up 411's alley and while I've caught the first episode, I was admittedly more interested in The River, which follows American Horror Story (and Supernatural before it) in bringing horror to television with its own twist--the mockumentary format--and a genuine horror pedigree in Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli. But can a horror series honestly work on network TV, and can a mockumentary hold up the gimmick for an ongoing series? Let's take a look as we kick off...



Episode 1.01/1.02: Magus/Marbeley

Our pilot episode starts off, like many found footage films have, with a title card and footage of happier times. Explorer and naturalist Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood) has been the host of the Wild Kingdom-like show The Undiscovered Country. Emmet is a more professor-like Steve Irwin; erudite, charismatic, wildly adventurous. He even has his own catchphrase: "There’s magic out there." His family--wife Tess (Leslie Hope) and young son Lincoln--are along for the ride along with the families of his crew, and to the TV audience it's something akin to the Waltons meets Steve Irwin. However, that was twenty-plus years ago, and as we come to the present we learn that Emmet has been missing for six months after he took his ship, the Malgus, down into the uncharted Amazon. Emmet has been declared legally deceased, and Lincoln (Joe Anderson) is okay to leave it that way. He's about ready to leave the past behind and move onto his medical career when his mother shows up with a camera crew with news; Emmet's personal beacon has been detected and she has a network crew ready to finance an expedition to find him, but they'll only pay for it if Lincoln comes along. Lincoln is beside himself, because despite public belief he didn't feel close to his father for years. "They know Dad and I hated each other," argues Lincoln. "That’s why we want you," replies Clark (Paul Blackthorne), the sketchy former producer of Undiscovered Country. You can tell he's going to be the unlikable one you hope dies every episode. Anyway, the pull of family is such that Lincoln agrees. Also, we need a way for the show to progress, and we can't do that if the attractive male lead doesn't go along, right?

So along the two go, with a full filming crew to boot. The characters are introduced in fairly quick order. There is Clark; Emilio (Daniel Zacapa), Emmet's longtime mechanic; Jahel (Paulina Gaitan), Emilio's superstitious daughter; Kurt (Thomas Kretschmann), the taciturn weapons man who doesn't tolerate a lot of foolishness; and cameramen AJ (Shaun Parkes) and Sammy (Jeff Galfer). They make it out to the beacon via a boat on the Amazon, during which Clark asks Joe to speak on camera about his relationship with his father. Joe's response? "Go fuck yourself." I like Lincoln already. Kurt also earns points by practically dislocating Clark's arm and tossing him overboard for touching his guns. Have I mentioned that Clark is the obvious unlikable crew member that every story like this seems to need? Still, I won't complain if we get to see Clark get the crap kicked out of him and shit on by the rest of the crew on a constant basis.

The crew finds the beacon, but it's underwater attached to a diving cage. Lincoln wants Tess to give up, but she's resolute. Someone turned the beacon on, so someone is alive still. When the group stops for supplies, they gain a new crew member--Lena (Eloise Mumford), daughter of cameraman Russ Landry, who went missing with Emmet. I can only assume this is to add the last needed card to the deck of the stock horror characters. Unsurprisingly she has a connection to Lincoln and Tess, having grown up on the boat with her dad, and there are obvious romantic sparks between Lincoln and Lena. Lena knows where the boat is, and so they head off. That's where things get weird, as the crew finds the abandoned Malgus, with the engine needing repair and hull breaches. The panic room on the ship (ships have panic rooms?) has been welded from the outside, and the crew doesn't even stop for a "Gee, I hope there's nothing dangerous inside" before they start cutting into it. Jahel warns them that this is a bad idea, but she only speaks Spanish and her father doesn't seem to share her convictions. Cue something that we see only fleetingly as an explosion of shadow busting out of a carved wooden object, escaping the panic room and wounding Lena. Lincoln awesomely punches the crap out of AJ for not helping him patch Lena up in favor of filming, then goes to investigate.

To their credit, some of the expedition are willing to pay attention at this point...albeit maybe too fast. There really isn't any questioning, perhaps because there isn't much time for it. Lena shows Lincoln video tapes that she knows about due to the fact that she was in communication with Emmet and Russ last, which shows Emmet doing some reality-bending things and slowly (or not-so-slowly) losing his mind. We get our first casualty among the crew in this first episode when Sammy decides to go out onto the deck to try and capture a shot of the elusive creature, which is the last mistake he'll ever make. They're lucky it's only eight episodes, 'cause there are only so many people to kill in the crew.

However for now, the death toll stands at just one, as Lincoln is smart enough to listen to Jahel and he learns from her that she knows some of the legends of the Bouina, the area they're exploring. How isn't exactly clear yet, though Jahel seems to have some sort of spiritual sight because, well, of course she does. Someone needs to, I guess. They learn that the producer Emmet brought along died, and Jahel says that the entity is a spirit who wanders looking for blood until it’s whole, and the wood was a cage for it. Lincoln is able to use the coffin and his own blood to trap it in, and he tosses the coffin over the edge into the water. With the Magus fixed up, they head out, but now with Lincoln convinced that his father is alive and they need to find him.

Cue episode two. We get more flashbacks of time past to start with, including Emmet playing the guitar and singing to a young Lincoln holding his teddy bear, Marbeley, as Tess decorates a Christmas tree. Back in the present, Lena and Lincoln use the video tapes and the progress of infection of a bite on Emmet's thumb--which is actually kind of smart--to try and figure out where Emmet was last. However it's Jahel who gives them their answer...or rather, it's Emmet. Or both, as what looks like a funky dragonfly enters Jahel's mouth as she's sleeping and possesses her. It's Emmet, although how exactly he became a bug is beyond me. It will either make sense later or be one of those Lost-style unexplained things. Anyway, Emmet-Jahel goes and finds Tess, and they have a remarkably creepy moment considering Jahel is like 18 and Tess is in her forties at least, and there is a hint of sexual tension played out. I don't know if there is an episode of Maury for "I was possessed and made out with my dad's boss's wife," but it sounds like something that would fit. On the plus side, he does give them a hint that they can use; he appears to have been captured by a local militia and with Emilio and Jahel staying back on the boat, the rest set out to find him. I'm not entirely sure of the logic behind "head into the jungle to go face-to-face with militia people," but they need to get them off the boat somehow I suppose.

The trip into the wilderness brings them to a rubber tree and a graveyard--strange, as the locals don't bury their dead underground. The rubber tree is the creepiest tree of all-time, with dolls tied to it in offering. Seriously, this thing makes the tree from Antichrist look like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree by comparison. Lincoln sees his bear Marbeley hanging among them, proof that Emmet has been there. And, of course, being in the jungle and having just encountered the supernatural, he takes the bear off the offering tree next to the graveyard. Brilliant, eh? Even better, it's well past dark and the crew camps near the tree and sets up cameras, which allow us to see these creepy-ass dolls at their creepiest. Old dirty doll heads are the devil, I swear. And as expected, they find themselves dealing with something paranormal as Tess is almost pulled under water when they decide to move away from the tree. Apparently there is an Amazon legend Emmet tells about a girl whose dolls falls in the river and she drowns trying to rescue it, and she is lonely so she makes people drown, and that's what they're dealing with. Lincoln tries to return the doll to the tree, but no dice. The thing grabs Tess and pulls her into the river, leading Lincoln and company to frantically return to the graveyard and dig up the girl's mother. After several moments where it doesn't look like it's going to work, Tess pulls herself out of the grave several yards away. The crew returns to the Magus and Lincoln tries to talk to Jahel/Emmet, but it's too late and Bug-Emmet flies out of Jahel and away. And somehow, some way, they're pressing onward, because they apparently haven't encountered enough weird crap yet.

So enough with the snarkish recap; let's get down to brass tacks. Is The River a show with a future on TV? Based off the first two episodes I would say that there is a lot of potential. There are many ways this could go wrong but with Steven Spielberg and Oren Peli at the producer's chairs--meaning they're at least paying some attention to it--it has just as much likelihood to head in the right direction. The "found footage" gimmick actually feels less like found footage than it does straight-up mockumentary. The differences between the two are thin but significant. For one, this show has a musical score edited in, something that you tend to find more with mockumentaries than straight found-footage films. That's a jarring decision at first, but Graeme Ravell has earned fourteen awards for his film and TV work for a reason and once you get past the fact that there is a score at all, it does add to the film. The production values for these first two episodes, directed by Jaume Colette-Serra (Orphan), are strong but remain well within a documentarian crew's possibility. The Magus is rigged with cameras which means we're not just relying on AJ's admittedly even-handed camera work to be our eyes, which is a plus. And the special effects are, while similarly fleeting in the guerilla-style of Paranormal Activity or other such projects, effective in that sparing use. You don't want to overdo it, and Colette-Serra keeps it reined in.

The big bonus this show has though is the acting. Bruce Greenwood is a great choice to play Emmet, but we haven't seen much from him yet as he's...well, missing still. Joe Anderson and Leslie Hope make Lincoln and Tess solid characters; Lincoln might be considered whiny at times but he at least has the good sense to listen to other people. Paul Blackthorne has made a character I truly hate but in a way that I'm supposed to, which is a good thing, and the rest of the cast is solid if not spectacular yet. They make what are essentially stock characters--hey, let's not beat around the bush about it--more than they deserve at this point and help the sillier moments in the plot carry through.

Silly plot moments, you say? And howdy. The characters' chief flaw is the inconsistency of their logic. In one moment Lincoln is telling his mother that they have to go back because he refuses to lose both parents to the Amazon, and then minutes later once he's beaten the ghost he says he's not turning back until he finds his father. Sometimes the characters come off savvy and sometimes they seem remarkably dumb. One can hope this characterization will improve, as it often does in TV shows. Few characters are nailed with depth from the start, but they need to smarten up quickly or I'll be expecting a hefty body count soon from sheer idiocy.

For those who prefer twists over character consistency, we have that in spades. Why does Clark catch Kurt talking to a mysterious someone on the phone about how he'll put Emmet down if he got too close to "the source?" And why does Clark do nothing about it? How does Jahel have her ability to see ghostly things, and how the hell did Emmet turn into a mosquito on steroids? You just know there's something more to Lena having had contact with the Magus crew most recently too, considering that she didn't mention it until she had to. And then there's that necklace Emmet gave Lincoln as a kid, which Emmet said was made by a Malinese woman and had something to do with destiny and life and death and something else...and Lena just so happens to have what looks like a replica of in a birthmark on the back of her neck. There are enough questions to keep me watching over the flimsy characterization in the script; it will be to this show's benefit that it aired two episodes and there's already only six to go, so we can see a full season of how this might play out.

The 411: There's a lot of potential in The River as shown in "Magus" and "Marbeley." The acting is good, the mockumentary gimmick plays well and the horror aspect is played up well. That isn't to say there aren't problems in the problematic writing of the characters, but that's something that can improve. You can't tweak a gimmick like this and you can't just fix actors. As it stands there is definitely enough to like in the show for me to keep watching with interest.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]