With supernatural demons, haunted boats and bone-chilling unexplainable murders, Tuesday primetime just became a lot scarier.
ABC kicked off its new series, “The River,” this week with a highly suspenseful, two-hour premiere investigating the whereabouts of missing TV personality and environmentalist Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood).
For fans of “Lost” and “Paranormal Activity,” “The River” will be sure to satisfy as it targets many of the central themes in both thrillers.
Shot with the same shaky documentary style that made the Paranormal Activity series so popular, “The River” features a motley cast of characters united by one goal — to find Dr. Cole.
When Dr. Cole’s emergency beacon sounds six months after he goes missing, his fans and his own son were just about to give up on finding him.
However, his wife Tess Cole (Leslie Hope) and the producer of his environmentalist series Clark (Paul Blackthorne) see the beacon as a sure sign of him still being alive — and will do anything to find him.
His son Lincoln Cole (Joe Anderson) resents Dr. Cole for putting him and his family’s life into the spotlight for most of his childhood, but he agrees to go with his mother to search for the father he presumes dead.
The series wastes no time bringing in spooky and unexplainable occurrences the second they set out on the river where the doctor went missing.
Within the first 10 minutes of the show, they find his emergency beacon and boat, but with his body nowhere in sight.
Audiences were no doubt screaming at the TV as the characters continued to make countless mistakes, which included losing their rafts and releasing a demon who in turn killed one of their cameramen before an hour of the show had gone by.
Dr. Cole also turns out to have a strange story of his own. Until his boat was found, none of the characters had any inkling of Lena (Eloise Mumford), the daughter of the cameraman who went missing with Dr. Cole, and who finds hidden tapes that show Dr. Cole dabbling in voodoo magic, walking on water and holding fire in his hands.
The tapes help dispel whatever doubt the characters had that something supernatural could be hunting them and Dr. Cole.
“The River” producers Michael Green and Oren Peli go after every imaginable phobia with scenes featuring possessed dolls, snakes, dead bodies, drowning and haunting folklore — just to name a few.
The season will feature eight episodes, and with only one clear plot line, it will be interesting to see how they can drag it out for a whole season. The characters do seem to offer their own promising backstories.
The first show ended with some sense of closure. However, there are still lingering questions that leave audiences eagerly guessing what the next episode might bring.
Reach the reporter at newlin.tillotson@asu.edu
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