"The River" premier review

ABC premiered their new show The River this past week, and despite my aversion to creepy looking shows like that, my attention had been captured by the trailer. Now, I was a little hesitant when I saw that it was done by the same people who did Paranormal Activity (a movie that did not impress me). I still gave the show a shot though.

My first impression were neutral. The acting was a bit... stilted. The characters, with what felt like the exception of Emmet (the missing father), did not garner any sympathy from me. Even after the first episode ("Magus"), the characters had changed little. The wife (whose name I can't remember at all) remained an almost obsessive woman who (shocks of shocks) had an affair while her husband was away. The son, London, seemed to flop between his original stance of "Leave me alone" to "Let's go find Dad"...

I was also expecting a bit more horror. The scare factor seemed a little low for even TV. American Horror Story was scarier than this, though I did not see much of that show either, thanks to that incredible thing called college. The first monster had not been as interesting as I hoped once it was revealed that it was the ghost of one of the crew members who had died before the rest of the Magus's crew went missing. I think that they could have drawn out the monster a little more, filled in a few details, before finally killing it, but they didn't.

Even creepiness seemed a little weak in the first couple of episodes. Episode two brought the first "interaction" with Emmet Cole, where the daughter of the mechanic is possessed by his spirit. She moved through the ship with jerky movements before lying down next to the wife. One of the first things out of the wife's mouth was "You can speak English?". Seriously? You've been basically living with this girl for almost a week or so, and you think that she's been hiding this ability to speak fluent English? The special effects in that scene were not particularly well-done either...

The only redeeming value of the show so far is the story. Granted, it's a bit of the stereotypical hunt for the missing person, but adding in the aspects of monsters in the Amazon and magic, especially "The Source" that Emmet was looking for, and this show has an otherwise interesting plot.

All in all, I'll place this show on my "let's see if this gets any better" list. The storyline is interesting, but if the actors don't learn to relax and play their characters believably, then I'm booting this show into the dead pile.