Oren Peli talks the structure of The River, calls it “very scary”

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

Horror fiends have had a recent string of luck when it comes to the boob tube; “The Walking Dead” and “American Horror Story” have proven that television can indeed be a home for scary shows, and next month PARANORMAL ACTIVITY mastermind Oren Peli along with Steven Spielberg will attempt to send chills dwon our spines with “The River”, a supernatural mystery set in the Amazon and airing on ABC.

FEARnet caught up with Peli recently and pried some words from the man about what we can expect from the series; especially interesting is what Peli had to say about the structure of the show, which sounds like it can call “The X-Files” a relative.

“Each episode has its own story that has some sort of a beginning a middle and an end. But at the same time it propels the main arc of the season, which is the search for the missing nature show host, and trying to uncover what’s going on in this mysterious part of the Amazon.”

“We’re trying to have both interesting characters and very compelling stories that develop throughout the season, but also we want to give the audience very scary episodes every week. It definitely presents some challenges, but we’re very happy with the way things have been turning out so far.”

Later in the interview, Peli talked up the show’s supernatural spook-factor, saying “it’s a very fine line between keeping things scary and keeping things campy. So we were all just very careful that things stay very scary.”

To read the whole interview, head on over to FEARnet. “The River” begins on FEBRUARY 7th on ABC.

The creators of Paranormal Activity join forces with DreamWorks and Michael Green (Heroes, Kings) for a riveting new thriller that takes you deep into the unknown, where the only thing darker than family secrets is the mystery at the heart of the Amazon – mystery that may just have you believe there’s magic out there.

Paulina Gaitan