It is that dark magic - of ghosts and mysticism and things that go bump in the rain forest - that runs through “The River.’’
Cole goes missing on an expedition and is presumed dead. But when his emergency beacon goes off, his tenacious wife, Tess (Leslie Hope, “24’’), estranged son Lincoln (Joe Anderson, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2’’), and his crew, including snaky producer Clark Quietly (Paul Blackthorne), set off to find him. Naturally, they do this with cameras rolling.
Whether or not viewers take themselves to “The River,’’ ABC and the creators deserve credit for one thing: There is nothing that looks like this show on television right now.
As he has been on several shows of late - including “Terra Nova’’ and “Smash’’ - Steven Spielberg is the marquee name attached to “The River,’’ but the more telling executive producer credits go to co-creator Oren Peli and Jason Blum, the men behind the big screen dread-fest “Paranormal Activity’’ and its sequels.
Employing a similar “found footage’’ approach provides “The River’’ with several layers of visuals and ably conjures the sticky humidity, cramped quarters, and general grime of its settings on the ship and in the jungle.
There are cameras following the family and crew - which also includes the daughter of a missing cameraman and childhood crush of Lincoln’s, the ship’s mechanic and his spirit-connected daughter, and several camera operators - in contemporary reality fashion, complete with confessionals. There are the grainier, oddly angled shots produced by the surveillance eyes scattered throughout the boat. And then there’s the shaky footage captured in the jungle: half-faces caught in ghostly partial lighting, feet trampling through the underbrush, the blurring and winking out of images as cameras crash to the ground when someone (or something) attacks whoever is behind the lens. The mix of the familiar and the frantic creates an intriguingly creepy effect.
