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Down by the river, you never know what you’ll find. It’s a cut through the valley that never stops bleeding. A gaping wound that carries the past to the present. It’s always moving. Always flowing. A relentless force of nature that looks so peaceful at first glance, but can turn to terror in an instant. The same can be said for the killer in writer/director Joshua Giuliano’s debut horror feature, River. Like the setting itself, it’s gorgeous on the surface, and creepy beneath. Joyful yet unsettling all at once. Constantly in conflict with itself, for better and worse.
River carries us into the lives of three siblings played by Jane Levy (Evil Dead), Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), and Max Mattern. The premise is simple: they have gathered to spread the ashes of their father on the river where they spent so many summers together. But after an accident leaves the boat out of gas, the trio finds themselves stalked by a faceless killer who will stop at nothing until they’re all dead.
Right away, Giuliano impresses with his debut. As we pass over images from the night before, we hear the audio of an unfortunate couple who met their doom at the hands of River’s monster. A young woman’s voice mentions her retainer before we spot it lying on the ground, covered in blood. This stylistic choice imbues the film with an uncanny dread. Like a corpse adrift in a river, we’re already floating towards some inevitable horror. Nothing we can do now but enjoy the ride.
And what a ride it is.
River’s like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre if it were run through a French Extremity filter. From a distance, our killer appears rather normal. Get closer, though, and you realize he’s wearing a fleshy mask with hollow eyes. And, like Chain Saw, there’s an incessant sense of impending doom. One that twists and turns inside your gut like a rabid animal. Though not a supernatural tale, it has the feel of otherworldly dread. Horrific imagery litters the screen, from the slow reveal of a charred corpse hanging from a bridge to the wide-eyed shock of a decapitated head held in the killer’s hands like a trophy. Every so often, he raises his palms to the sky. Why? Who knows. Doesn’t matter. The effect is the same regardless: the sense of a sacrificial ritual that is as ancient as the river our characters are trapped on.
That nagging dread couples with the film’s visceral nature that would feel right at home at the turn of the century with movies like High Tension or Inside. Though it has plenty of reason to, the camera never flinches away. Instead, Nick Matthews’ gorgeous cinematography forces us to witness the violence up close. Faces are pummelled. Bodies are stabbed repeatedly. The blood flows like a river with a vicious fury that cannot be contained. All of it is representative of the agonizing grief that exists between the siblings, and the brutal reality of life that we’re always drifting towards, whether we’re ready for it or not.
As for the siblings, Levy, Rothe, and Mattern all deliver exceptional performances that keep River afloat during its sillier moments (more on that in a moment). It’s been ten years since Levy last starred in a horror film (Don’t Breathe), and River is a kickass return for the actor. Fans of Levy will be thrilled to watch her let it all out as she rages, covered in blood and sick of the killer’s shit, as if she’s been holding it in for a decade. Rothe, meanwhile, brings a sympathetic turn as a flawed but trying sister, not unlike her character in Happy Death Day. Someone who isn’t at their best, but makes you root for them to get better. As for Mattern, he’s a name to keep an eye on. The actor just starred in the Cape Fear series and brings both a heavy sense of tortured grief as well as the comedic relief, stumbling around and tripping like the most incapable of genre characters.
It’s in that comedy that River sometimes threatens to sink beneath the weight of. For the most part, the film carries a tone of visceral brutality and unrelenting horror. That contrasts mightily with an occasional absurdity that rips you right out of the picture like a screaming baby from the womb. For example, one moment sees characters escaping on a bicycle of all things. After what must be an hour of cycling, they turn to find the killer jogging right behind them. You better believe my theater cackled. Because the film generally takes itself so seriously, I found it difficult to determine if moments like that are meant to be camp, or just plain bad writing. Intentional or not, I can’t say my audience didn’t have a blast laughing with/and or at it. It’s a movie that begs to be watched with a crowd.
I also can’t help but compare River to Jason Takes Manhattan, in the sense that it’s more like characters run into a killer on the river and then bail. If you’re expecting a trapped-on-the-water horror movie with a killer like the shark from Jaws, well, Giuliano explores that briefly before giving up on the premise entirely and turning to your basic backwoods stalk-and-slash.
No, the originality with River isn’t in the premise, but in Giuliano’s intoxicating approach. The filmmaker shows exceptional talent in building dread, using the camera to full effect by making us well aware of the approaching horror and forcing us to sit with that knowledge until it becomes almost excruciating. With his debut, Giuliano unleashes a savage ride down the river straight into the gaping jaws of horror. Bloody, brutal, and branded with the filmmaker’s unique style, River signals a fascinating new voice in the genre rising to the surface. Sure, it finds itself off balance at times, and some will likely laugh it off entirely, but if you allow yourself to go with the flow of River, it’s a fun time being scared at the movies.
Summary
Though tonally inconsistent with a humor that threatens to sink the whole thing, the visceral, dread-choked nature of River signals a fascinating new voice in the horror genre.
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