USA TODAY International Edition
‘ The River’ rafts into scary waters
ABC horror series is set on the Amazon
One needn’t be afraid of the water to be spooked by The River.
The paranormal horror story ( ABC, Tuesday, 9 ET/ PT) takes viewers into the deepest, darkest parts of the Amazon with a rescue crew trying to find a popular nature show host, Emmet Cole ( Bruce Greenwood), who disappeared while in pursuit of a power beyond magic.
Mysterious, unexplainable terrors appear quickly and forcefully after the group, which includes Cole’s wife Tess ( Leslie Hope) and estranged son Lincoln ( Joe Anderson), finds his damaged boat, The Magus.
“It’s a fractured family put in an extreme situation. In my case, it’s a character who would do anything for the love of her husband,” Hope says. “They step into an unknown world where the rules don’t make sense anymore. . . . The more the mysteries are uncovered in the Amazon, the more mysterious the characters become, because we all have secrets.”
Others on this voyage of the potentially damned include an embittered producer who is filming the search for a TV special; a secretive security specialist; the daughter of one of Cole’s lost colleagues; and a ship engineer whose daughter has a connection to mystical, darker forces.
“I think initially ( viewers are) going to get sucked in by the pace and how successfully scary it is, but before long they’ll realize that everybody on board has two or three cards they’re just not willing to show,” says Greenwood, whose character is seen via his video recordings. “Knowing who to trust is one of the major themes of the show.”
The River avoids the overly gory style of some horror productions, Hope says. “I think it’s scarier what we’re doing. It’s stuff you can’t really see that’s just around the corner. I think that is the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night.”
The show won’t kill characters just to create a body count, but the stakes have to be real, executive producer Zack Estrin says. “If the scares don’t win sometimes, you’re going to stop being scared.”
The River has a documentary- style look. The Magus is outfitted with cameras and the producer’s cameramen catch everything else.
The series, which was filmed in Hawaii, has an impressive scare pedigree, with Steven Spielberg and Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli among its producing partners and longstanding tales of terror as inspiration for many of its stories.
“There is such a rich amount of folklore and legend” from the Amazon region, executive producer Michael Green says.
The producers want to entertain the casual viewer as well as the devoted one by mixing weekly stand- alone stories with an ongoing mystery. “There’s something really great about this idea of ‘ Let’s do a horror movie a week’ and there would be discoveries along the way that you could ( pick up) if you were watching all the other episodes,” Green says.
Mysteries will be resolved and new ones will arise, Estrin says. “Where is Emmet Cole is not The Question, just the first question.”