Shooting the River

It's weird how movies and TV shows can sometimes disappear from memory. All that money and glamour and even decent reviews but, if it's not a smash hit, most people won't remember a TV show ten years later. I recently watched 2012's The River, an eight episode mid-season replacement series for ABC produced by Steven Spielberg, back when people still watched network television. It's a found footage series, coming at the tail end of that fad, and it quickly deviates from that concept, but it's not a bad show.

Bruce Greenwood stars as a sort of cross between Steve Irwin and Indiana Jones, a TV host who goes missing somewhere in the jungles around the Amazon River (the show was filmed in Hawaii and a little bit in Porto Rico). Most of the series follows the adventures of his family and a few co-workers as they try to find him.

Some of the episodes are really good. Episode six in particular, which follows Greenwood's character as his situation in the jungle goes from bad to worse, is riveting. Some of the episodes are a little silly, like the writers are completely lost at sea in this format, like one episode involving a tree of haunted dolls. In the penultimate episode, the group stumble across a vast hospital in the middle of the jungle overrun by zombies. This one really dates the series. Remember how ubiquitous zombies were in the late 2000s, early 2010s? By 2012, Walking Dead was into its second season and its star was rising. So in this atmosphere, maybe it made sense that the characters on The River don't spend much time questioning the existence of zombies or wondering exactly how they function. In moments where it seems like it would be more natural for them to be wondering in terror what the hell is happening, they keep nattering on about Greenwood and drama back home.

The found-footage conceit stretches really thin really fast. The cameramen are established as characters but there are many scenes with shots from cameras that couldn't possibly be in the positions required to get the visible angles. It's hard to believe all these characters would sign off on having cameras on in their quarters at all times, too. It would've been kind of funny if some of the dialogue were shown to be scripted like a true "reality" series.

Much of The River is available on YouTube.

X Sonnet #1915

A lactic swamp seduced the foil stars.
With fruit and toes, the corn was clearly fake.
A grainy monster scraped the screen of bars.
The morning broke like ostrich eggs can break.
A broken line of words derailed the flick.
A girl denounced a novel cheese at lunch.
To cater right, one must avoid the sick.
A zombie fad was launched on someone's hunch.
A market team controlled a tiny boat.
The gondola was meant for Venice ways.
But busy minds created ballast bloat.
It sank beneath the distant ocean waves.
Of this was born computer savaged screens.
A roasted lens condemned a hill of beans.