If you’re looking to create a scary television series, who better to enlist than the man behind Paranormal Activity and Insidious, two of the film industry’s biggest scares in the past several years?
The River bows Tuesday night on CTV and ABC, and is widely considered network’s answer to cable’s American Horror Story. The eight-episode series revolves around a world-famous wildlife expert and his film crew who go missing in the Amazon, and his wife and son who create their own documentary when they go to the Amazon in search of him.
Canadians Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek) and Leslie Hope (24) star as the wildlife expert, Dr. Emmet Cole and his wife Tess, respectively.
They’re joined by son Lincoln (Joe Anderson, The Twilight Saga Parts 1 & 2), Cole’s ex-producer Clark (Paul Blackthorne, Lipstick Jungle), Lena, a girl whose father also went missing with Dr. Cole (Eloise Mumford, Crash), mechanic Emilio (Daniel Zacapa, Resurrection Blvd) and his daughter, Jahel (Paulina Gaitan, Sin Nombre), bodyguard Kurt Brynildson (Thomas Kregschmann, King Kong), and cameraman A.J. (Shaun Parkes, The Mummy Returns).
For fans of the horror genre, the big draw is in the fact that The River is executive-produced and written by Paranormal Activity’s Oren Peli, alongside co-creator Michael R. Perry (Persons Unknown, The Dead Zone) and executive producers Steven Spielberg and Michael Green (Smallville, Heroes).
The idea for The River first evolved in Peli’s mind as a potential movie about a missing documentary crew in the rainforest, and the rescue mission to find them. But it was put aside until Peli had a meeting with Steven Spielberg, who wanted to do a show together.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK. Sure, whatever you say.’” Peli laughed to critics in January at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour. “At that point I was barely figuring out the world of movies. I had no idea about anything with TV and I tried to come with some cool idea. Months went by and I didn’t have one.”
It wasn’t until Peli shared his River idea with a writer on the second Paranormal Activity film that he thought about converting it into a TV show, but by the time he was ready to pitch it to DreamWorks almost everyone involved was in love with the premise.
“I thought, you’ll be so much more invested week to week if you got to know these people, if they felt like real people as opposed to … just sort of surface stereotypes — the football player and his girlfriend out in the woods,” explained Green. “We wanted you to be worried about these people, and that was the real focus.”
The producers also want the cast to be concerned about their future too. While they promise not to slash characters just to be gratuitous, they also promise that during the first season, no one is safe.
“My philosophy in television is (to) treat every script like your last because there’s a good chance it will be,” Green added. “So we don’t really leave a lot of cards on the table. We do the best story we can for that episode and trust ourselves to come up with more later.”
If watching shaky camera series is your thing, then The River is right up your alley. Thrilling, dark and creepy as hell, the series pushes network boundaries in daring new ways — at least in the initial episode.
The River’s two-hour season premiere airs Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 9 p.m. ET on CTV/ABC.
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