Recap: Los Ciegos (2/14/12)

Another week and another episode of The River. This time around we’re running from the Morcego, a group of natives that use some sort of toxin to blind their prey before killing it. We start off with a lead to the location of Emmet Cole, a cave somewhere in the jungle. The cave appears in a lot of his videos so it’s only natural to think that he may be there. Seeing as how there are some volcanic rocks visible in some of the videos, the location of the cave is determined.

The group sets out into the jungle to find the cave… and almost instantly find it. I understand that the footage has been edited after the fact, but it still seems awfully convenient that they find everything so quickly. Before entering the cave they find a strange drawing near the entrance which Jahel immediately has a problem with, because she knows everything. Apparently it’s the symbol of the Morcego, as I mentioned above. Jahel obviously has a problem going into the cave now, but the rest of the group, aside from the camera man who refuses to go into caves due to his experience in a mine collapse in the past, have no qualms with exploring it further. As the group makes their way into the cave they happen upon the body of an aid worker. The body has been mutilated and the eyes removed, but they press on. As they continue on they can see a sort of faint glow or reflection from the light of their flashlights. Upon reaching an opening the cave they shine their lights on what ends up being thousands of bats hanging from the ceiling, which subsequently wake up and chase them out of the cave. AJ, the camera man who stayed behind, is laughing hysterically when the group comes barreling out of the darkness and Kurt, the security guy, is none to pleased with him.

They decide to set up camp for the evening, but Kurt is still pissed off at AJ and throws his stuff into the jungle and tells him to find somewhere else to sleep. Little did Kurt know that this would be the best thing that could have happened to them. As the rest of them were sleeping, the Morcego snuck into the camp and used some sort of fungus or bacteria on the groups eyes. One by one they all start to lose their vision, except for AJ who wasn’t sleeping with the rest of them. In the end it is determined that, based on Emmet’s findings, a bulb that grows under a specific tree is the only thing that can reverse the blindness. So before they are all blinded, Kurt, AJ and Lena head out to find the bulb, but are slowly being stalked by the Morcego. Eventually Kurt and Lena go blind and AJ decides that he’s going to get killed if he sticks with them, so he decides he’s just going to leave everyone and try to make his way back to civilization. As he journeys off though he finds the tree under which the bulbs grow and decides that maybe he could help after all.

The bulbs end up actually being under the tree in a small, dark cave, that AJ is none to pleased about having to crawl into, and rightfully so. As soon as he gets all the way in and gets the bulbs, the ground around him starts to give way and he’s buried alive… until the Morcego pull him out for some reason. I’m not really sure why the Morcego decided to start helping them instead of hunting them, but whatever. Meanwhile back on the boat the Morcego are stalking the rest of the group until Clark got up and offered himself up as bait to try to buy the rest of the group some time before Lena, Kurt and AJ got back. Thankfully whatever Clark said was enough to drive the Morcego away and everything turns out just fine.

I didn’t think this weeks episode was as strong as the first two we got last week, but it wasn’t bad. The leeches/slugs that were crawling on Lena in the forest were probably the scariest part of the episode  which is kind of sad because you would assume that a group of natives painted all white with sunken eyes stalking you would be scarier. I didn’t expect every episode of the show to be amazing, but coming off of last week I was expecting a little more than what we got. Hopefully things ramp up next week considering there’s only 5 more episodes in the 1st season.

What did you guys think?