Eloise Mumford and Joe Anderson, courtesy ABC
THE RIVER
Friendly Rating: Elementary age and up
Safety Rating: Surprisingly little violence and no blood
Quality Rating: Too scary for me, but probably not scary enough for the hardened
New series premieres tonight at 9 p.m. on ABC
I found The River pretty hard to watch, but it had nothing to do with the story or the characters. It was all the camera movement that made me more car sick than scared. The show is shot in a Blair Witch Project/cinema verite kind of style that’s pretty distracting.
The premise is that Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood), a TV explorer whose show was watched by bazillions of children, has disappeared and his wife Tess (Leslie Hope) and his now grown and estranged son Lincoln (Joe Anderson) go off to find him in the jungles of the Amazon, along with Lena (Eloise Mumford), Lincoln’s childhood friend and the daughter of Emmet’s cameraman, and a TV crew consisting of Emmet’s former producer Clark Quietly (Paul Blackthorne) and AJ Poulain (Shaun Parkes).
Safety-wise, there is lots of peril and ghosties and ghoulies, but nothing too visually frightening. Okay, the spirit tree filled with broken dolls was pretty grim, but there was no blood letting. Lots of bleeped and pixelated language, though. Actually, most of the episode seemed to revolve around waiting for scary stuff to happen.
I didn’t like it. Granted, that’s not saying much, since yours truly has the intestinal fortitude of a four-year-old with night terrors, and as such, I’m not a good guide when it comes to the horror genre. But between waiting around for scary stuff and all the camera movement – we’re supposed to believe that all this is being shot as it happens and they do a pretty good job of it, although chase scenes with the camera operator running don’t work so well, in my opinion.
If you’ve got a young horror fan, this might be a good option, but I don’t think it’s good enough to last very long.
