'The River' will scare you like TV almost never does

Say what you will about The River — and there’s a lot to say, both pro and con — it succeeds where almost all of its genre predecessors invariably fail. It’s actually, occasionally, but fairly consistently scary.

ABC’s new serialized supernatural thriller, also airing on CTV, kicked off Tuesday night with a two-hour debut crammed with back-story and plot portent and character revelation . . . and several genuinely palpable scares. Gasping, even shrieking out loud, leaping off the couch, digging nails into any available arm kind of scares.

The kind of scares you almost never get from TV. Not that they’re particularly gross or elaborate — marginally the former, and then mostly suggested, and really quite the opposite of the latter.

The River follows an up-the-Amazon expedition in search of a missing TV-star naturalist (uncommonly charismatic Canadian Bruce Greenwood), led by his guilt-plagued wife (another chasperismatic Canadian, Leslie Hope) and chronicled in up-close and personal detail by an increasingly uneasy camera crew.

And therein lies the show’s true brilliance — assuming they settle down a bit once the thing gets up and running.

A large part of the action, and in particular the scary bits, is seen through the subjective, kinetic (at times, annoyingly so), deliberately limited point-of-view of the ever-present cameras.

An ingeniously visceral visual technique that pulls you right into the moment, and is thus most effective when that moment goes “boo!”

The documentary façade also provides a handy and immediate shortcut for exposition and characterization, though here is where it courts excess, and needs to become more selective as the series progresses.

The constant motion of the perspective camera will ultimately, if unchecked, provoke audience nausea. That much of the action takes place on a boat certainly isn’t going to help.

The handheld camera-eye technique will be familiar to the contemporary horror film fan, recalling particularly the unlikely no-budget hit The Blair Witch Project, and the subsequent Paranormal Activity franchise, created by neophyte writer/producer Oren Peli, who not surprisingly fills a similar function on The River.

His ABC masters have a larger agenda — they clearly, desperately want another Lost, and that intentional resemblance overshadows Peli’s scare tactics.

But Lost got lost along the way, as the creators struggled to sustain suspense so the network could go on milking it, well past its due date.

The River could fall into a similar trap, network notwithstanding. At the rate these first two hours burn through story, it will take many more mysteries and monsters than are immediately apparent to keep this thing afloat.

And, unlike Lost, with its multitudinous cast, The River, with its small and intimate ensemble, has limited license to threaten, maim and dispatch.

At the current fatality rate, the ill-fated expedition could be an abandoned ghost ship by the end of the month.