Paranormal series puts us up spook creek without a paddle

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The River stars, from left, Joe Anderson, Paulina Gaitan, Paul Blackthorne, Bruce Greenwood (kneeling in front), Daniel Zacapa, Shaun Parkes, Thomas Kretschmann, Leslie Hope and Eloise Mumford. (ABC)

There's a scare-seeking segment of the TV audience that has been feeling a bit lost since Lost.

Tonight, an anything-but-relaxing cruise down The River will surely leave them feeling that they've found somewhere else to belong.

The River, a genuinely spooky paranormal thriller that premières with back-to-back episodes tonight at 8 on ABC and CTV, seeks to fill the void left by that earlier ABC drama's heavenward exit by combining elements of Lost's otherworldly-evil-in-the-jungle suspense with faux-documentary stylistic tricks borrowed from such big-screen scarefests as Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project.

The result, happily and frighteningly, is impressive.

The River, which counts Steven Spielberg as one of its executive producers and has Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli as producer and head writer, is centred around the search to find a popular science/nature TV host who went missing during a trip up an uncharted arm of the Amazon River basin.

With an obvious nod to The Crocodile Hunter's Steve Irwin, Bruce Greenwood plays Dr. Emmet Cole, the host of a long-running TV series called The Undiscovered Country, in which he travelled the world, wife and young son in tow, in search of unusual creatures and exotic destinations.

The pilot episode opens with clips from the fictional TV show, in which Dr. Cole is clearly delighted by what he's encountering, often ending segments with a wide-eyed grin and the declaration that "there's magic out there."

On his last trip, however, the magic seems to have turned black. He went missing somewhere on the Amazon and, despite an exhaustive search, was declared dead after six fruitless months.

His wife, Tess (Leslie Hope), refuses to accept the idea that he's gone. Their son, Lincoln (Joe Anderson), who has never forgiven his father for all the missed holidays and birthdays the son endured while Dad was off inspiring other people's kids, is ready to move forward with his own life and career.

But when Tess receives news that Emmet's distress beacon has suddenly been heard after six months of silence, she wants to mount a rescue expedition. And a TV-documentary crew is willing to fund the effort, provided that both Tess and Lincoln take part and are willing to be filmed during the trip.

Reluctantly, Lincoln agrees, and the Coles round up a small crew -- ship's captain and engineer, armed security expert, TV camera operators -- and begin the small-craft journey up the winding river in search of Emmet's research vessel, the Magus. As they approach a largely unexplored area known by the locals as "the Boiuna," Jahel (Paulina Gaitan), the Spanish-speaking daughter of the ship's engineer, warns them that they should go no further.

Of course, they do. And when they arrive at the spot indicated by Emmet's suddenly active distress beacon, things start to happen.

After a slightly slow-moving start in which background details and characters are introduced, The River gets serious about doling out supernatural mysteries, creepy coincidences and, eventually, terrifying, bloody attacks by an evil the would-be rescuers can't clearly identify.

Big scares

The existence of the within-the-show documentary crew allows The River's producers to deliver big scares in several different styles and from dozens of intriguing and effective angles. The pilot episode has at least a dozen memorable "Holy crap!" moments built in, and the second instalment, which follows immediately, suggests that the ratcheted-up tension can, indeed, be effectively maintained as The River moves forward.

Canadian-born actress Hope, who will always be remembered for her shocking exit from Season 1 of 24 (she played Jack Bauer's doomed wife, Teri), looks more than ready to serve as the steadfast (and, presumably, longer-surviving) anchor of this cast of variously motivated jungle travelers. Anderson provides a strong counterpoint as the son who has only reluctantly agreed to embrace his mother's sense of mission, and Paul Blackthorne adds an element of identifiably human evil as a TV producer with a not-so-hidden agenda.

In all, it's a rather gripping debut.

If you've been searching in vain for a series to satisfy your post-Lost appetite for jungle-bound suspense, confounding mysteries and evils beyond human understanding, this unsettling River cruise might get you headed in the right direction.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca

TV REVIEW

The River

Starring Bruce Greenwood and Leslie Hope

Tonight at 8

ABC and CTV

4 stars out of 5

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 7, 2012 D3