By John Keegan

“The River” takes a step back from the psychological horrors of the previous episode and turns to something a bit more familiar to genre fans in this installment.  I would call this the “Resident Evil episode”, because that was precisely what was coming to mind from the start.  And given my usual lack of enthusiasm for zombie stories (closer to loathing, actually), I was surprised at how well this episode worked for me.

By John Keegan

“The River” is the kind of series that can be polarizing.  As I mentioned the last time I reviewed the show, I think it fails on the basis of its central gimmick.  Certainly the first few episodes relied so much on the “found footage” approach, and the jump scares that come with it, that the story was often buried.  It’s no shock that the series has lost nearly half of its original audience, and it’s lucky to still have the chance to be seeing the end of its short first season run.

By John Keegan and J.M. Graham

"The River" has been one of the more confounding viewing experiences so far this season. Despite some pretty subpar writing, mediocre acting and a dubious central conceit, it has somehow managed to be very entertaining and watchable. One might even say that the show has a certain magic to it, if one wanted to pluck the low hanging fruit. So on the heels of a decent episode that brought up some concerns about the urgency around the search for Emmet but still suffered from all of the foundational issues plaguing "The River", viewers are suddenly and without warning treated to an absolute knockout of an episode that for an hour manages to get almost everything right.

By John Keegan and J.M. Graham

This was an odd episode. After the credits rolled I looked back on it and considered it a pretty decent episode, one that certainly if it was in another series wouldn’t be really worth mentioning. But after realizing that it was the halfway point of the season, I got to be a bit more concerned. There was not any sense of urgency about the episode, and there hasn’t been really any sort of coherence in the narrative or in the development of the characters. So far it’s meant that the show has just been entertaining, if at times a bit farcical, but it’s nonetheless disappointing.