PLOT:  Dr. Emmet Cole, the host of the globe-trotting nature show “The Undiscovered Country” has gone missing after an expedition into the Amazon.  Six months later, his emergency beacon has been activated, and his wife and son trek into the jungle on an expedition funded by the company who made his show to see if he’s still alive.  In “Pilot”, the group make their way down the river in an effort to find his beacon and his ship, the Magus.  Unfortunately, they also discover he had been obsessed with investigating something very unnatural at the time of his disappearance.  In “Marbley”, the group uses evidence they found in the previous episode to continue their search into the rainforest itself.  They also delve deeper into the mythology of the strange, uncharted area they’re exploring.  However, those same myths might not let them continue their journey untested.

PROS:

• When I reviewed “American Horror Story”, something that could almost always be said for the show was that its flashbacks worked amazingly.  The same thing can be said about “The River”.  Based on a story idea from Oren Peli (of Paranormal Activity fame), the show combines documentary-style footage of the group hunting Cole in the modern day with B-roll footage, outtakes, and video of his show.  These bits from the past work splendidly and are consistently the best part of each episode.  Additionally, as a huge fan of the movie Disturbing Behavior, I’m always glad to see Bruce Greenwood, aka “Dr. Caldicott” there and “Dr. Cole” here, get more work.

• The show also has some knack for atmosphere as both episodes use a particular location as the main place for most of its scares.  In “Pilot”, it’s the Magus.  In “Marbley”, it’s a patch of the rainforest surrounded by unbelievably creepy doll offerings.  Whether or not the EVENTS of the episode always work, the set design and setting itself does.

• The best characters in the show are the father and daughter who pilot the boat, Emilio and Jahel Valenzuela.  The duo serves as a good bridge between the natural world of the physical forest and the unnatural, supernatural world that Cole had become obsessed with.  Also good, particularly in the first episode, is Lincoln, Cole’s son.  He seems to be both the most grounded in reality and the most open to believing in the possibility of something beyond rational explanation.  He’s also vital to a key subplot I hope gets more time in future episodes that involves the question of how “perfect” this little adventuring family was behind the scenes.

• Both of these episodes, while from Oren Peli’s idea, were directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, director of the 2005 House of Wax remake and 2009’s Orphan.  I bring this up to make a point:  Collet-Serra has done good work in the past and some scenes in this show his abilities (like a confrontation between Lincoln and his mother, Tess, and many of the scenes where the camera is more stable).  However, on the whole, this found footage style is WELL outside his comfort zone, so I do commend him for trying to branch out.

CONS:

• That said, Oren Peli apparently is NOT stepping out of his comfort zone in this story idea, and that’s a problem.  What “The River” is, at least judging from the first two episodes, is Paranormal Activity’s style jammed into an Amazon-set TV show.  Look at the facts:  the very first thing the crew does when they reach the big location of the episode, whether it be the ship or the doll offering area, is hook up a series of cameras that they can monitor things through.  Each episode also builds to some big event involving shaky-cam that attempts to be the scariest part of the episode.  This idea works in Paranormal Activity because there AREN’T COMMERCIAL BREAKS.  See, in a movie, found footage generally works because the audience is made to believe they’re actually watching some mysterious tape or reels of film of some sort.  In a TV show, unless it’s on a premium channel, the show has to have ads in it, a fact that usually kills that vital element of the subgenre.  Imagine watching “The Last Road to Hell” in Cannibal Holocaust with fast food and jewelry ads cut into it.  Kind of loses the impact, doesn’t it?  As a result, sure, the concepts and ideas “The River” is presenting are interesting, but it never fully engages like a found footage movie or like “American Horror Story”’s pilot.  It just feels lackluster and never made me fully care about what was going on.

• Another question:  “American Horror Story”’s premiere (as an example) was a limited commercial interruption episode.  It was written that way.  One story.  “The River”’s premiere is a “two-hour premiere event”.  It was not WRITTEN that way though.  Instead, ABC decided to air the first two episodes back-to-back.  As a result, about midway through the second episode, this show got really old, really quickly.  There were some great moments in the second half of that episode, but by then, I was drowning in a sea of “I’m so bored” and “I couldn’t possibly care less”.

• So, as mentioned, Lincoln was pretty good in the first episode… until the end.  At that point, the character of Lincoln’s position on the situation shifts so suddenly and hard that he lost me almost completely for the entire second episode.  It’s possible splitting the two episodes up would have blunted the impact of that blunder, but I can’t say for sure.

• So that makes me dislike one of my first episode favorites in the second episode, what about the Valenzuelas?  They’re BARELY IN IT.  In fact, Jahel, who was fantastic in the first episode, is basically incapacitated for much of the episode after a bizarre scene with Tess.  Her father, as a result, remains behind to care for her and also basically vanishes from the story.  Hopefully they’ll be back next week.

• Early in the first episode, a sudden swarm of CGI dragonflies flies around the crew fairly leisurely.  I want to make this clear…I HATED these things.  They become mildly important in the second episode (in a way I didn’t like), but appearing so early in the first episode when there really isn’t that much overt CGI in either episode makes it feel weird at first, then totally out of place.  Everything done with the dragonflies thus far could’ve been done in other, non-CGI ways.  (For the record, if you want to see them use CGI correctly, there’s a later scene in the first episode where Cole holds fire in his hand.  THAT’S a good scene.)

• Without going into spoilers, let’s talk about the endings of these two episodes for a second.  The first episode’s ending felt so much like Peli had ripped himself off for this story that I felt offended someone was offering it to me as a new idea.  In addition, it was shot with so much shaky-cam it was near-impossible to fully know what was going on.  The second episode’s ending did better, weaving the mythology of the area into the story and having some tension and scares (seriously, the doll offering area deserves an award of some sort for keeping me even remotely interested in the second episode).  And then they decided they wanted to resolve the major conflict using a method that is clichéd, overdone, and a cop-out.  *sigh*

Overall, one can only hope that “The River” gets better as it goes on; otherwise I’m in for a long haul.  “Pilot” was a slightly better episode than “Marbeley”, mostly through having better character interactions.  Both episodes should also be commended for having decent atmosphere and well-done set design as well as effectively using footage from the “past”.  However, beyond that, the first two episodes of “The River” are just not compelling television.  The “found-footage” style falls flat on its face here due to tension-destroying commercial breaks and climaxes hurt by overused shaky-cam.  Is it possible that I would have liked the second episode better had ABC not aired it immediately after the first?  Yes… but the problems I saw would still have been there and the show would still feel like an underwhelming mess derivative of its creator’s prior work.  Directors with staying power usually grow from project to project.  However, if later episodes of this series don’t take more chances with the established tropes of Peli’s filmography, then he’ll just be stagnating with this.  The ending of the second episode showed some promise of steps in the right direction, though, and I can only hope, for my own sake, that next week’s episode, “Los Ciegos”, continues that momentum.