The River, 1x02: “Marbeley” (2012)
Found-footage maestro/producer Oren Peli and Paranormal Activity 2 screenwriter Michael R. Perry’s first foray into televisual horror is a surprising mid-season replacement, as it manages to be scarier, more intense, perhaps cheesier and enjoyable than most current new television; another worthy step in horror’s recent (re)invasion of the airwaves, as well as an interesting landmark in found-footage/mockumentary horror, which, much to my pleasure, is a cycle that refuses to die.
When Dr. Emmet Cole (Québec-born actor and middleweight TV veteran Bruce Greenwood), host of the long-running (22 seasons) show The Undiscovered Country disappears on the Amazon River, his family and crew - financed by the studio under the condition they record everything, effectively turning their expedition into another show (that is, the one you are in fact watching) - set out to the Amazon to quickly find themselves trapped in a maze of post-colonial ghosts, shamanism, as well as the reality-warping lenses of their own technological devices (to a lesser extent).
Indeed, the show’s uncanny imagery (digitally obscured wilderness, dolls, motion blur, surveillance footage) is familiar yet entirely effective and, most interestingly, at times had me wondering if the pixelization resulting of the fact I was streaming the show was intentional or not. Additionally, the “reality” aspect of the show allows for bleeped out profanity, which unwittingly adds to the realism. Without breaking new grounds, The River makes great use of its two cameras as well as the multiple surveillance cameras available inside the Magus (Cole’s ship), also using the locale effectively, in ways that will not fail to recall Lost’s scarier moments and iconic Smoke Monster.
The two-part pilot, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The House of Wax, Orphan and Unknown), initially finds the crew pitted against a blood-thirsty “dry spirit”, extremely reminiscent of the demon of the Paranormal Activity films, but as they go deeper and deeper downstream and encounter, amongst a few things, soul-carrying magic blue fireflies and British graveyards, one realizes that they are dealing with a complexly interwoven, supernatural and hostile wilderness. The second episode, per example, finds the cast of characters having to deal with an entirely different supernatural force and I understand that the show will follow this structure as the team pursues its search for Emmet Cole and venture deeper into uncharted territory. Furthermore, I love the very Lovecraftian idea of an explorer having gone too far in his quest for magic and power as to have caused his own damnation. “There is magic out there!”, he spews as the tagline of his show, and hopefully, by season’s end, we will know exactly what he means by that.
The River isn’t sharply written (it really isn’t) or even performed but its comfortable although skilful play with hyper-contemporary horror tropes -as well as older notions of repressed colonial forces clashing with native spiritualism - is extremely exciting to me and I found myself completely invigorated by the prospect of an episodic found-footage adventure. Evolving at a neck-breaking pace, I truly cannot wait to see where the scheduled 8 episodes of season 1 will bring us. After all, the Amazon, which hopefully becomes increasingly like the Styx, can’t go on forever…or can it?
