The Midnight section kicked off at TIFF with a bang thanks to Joshua Giuliano’s chilling slasher, River, which delivers all of the gruesome mayhem that Shudder fans have come to expect. It’s not a film that reinvents the wheel or anything like that, but then, nobody is asking for that to be the case. Giuliano, who just lined up a new horror project backed by Blumhouse Atomic Monster, brings atmospheric thrills and gripping sibling drama to a film that will leave you absolutely soaked through with dread.
River stars fan-favorite Scream Queens Jane Levy (Evil Dead) and Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) as estranged sisters, with the latter returning home from the big city to mourn the death of their father. Well, mourn might be an overstatement as they see their experiences with him very differently. The man was clearly complicated and had his share of personal demons. Cape Fear actor Max Mattern plays their scrawny, timid younger brother, who is hit the hardest by Dad’s death.
Heading out to their father’s favorite river to dump his ashes, their boat stops dead in the water. And in the midst of squabbling, they come under assault by a pair of masked killers, a man and woman, stalking them from both sides.
From the moment River begins, it grabs you with Giuliano’s clever stoking of our imaginations. While the camera pans over an empty vehicle left behind in the forest, we hear the voices of a doomed couple, young lovers, in the moments before they are attacked and slaughtered. Like much of the film, it’s a scene that is both beautiful and ghastly; a splash of blood here, a bloody retainer there, left out to rot and desecrate the beautiful natural surroundings.
The killers themselves are terrifying and relentless. Their masks do more to obscure their faces than outright hide them, which makes them even scarier because these killers aren’t shy about what they’re doing. Sure, they’re deep in the forests, but the attacks come non-stop and with little concern for anyone finding out. It almost feels like the siblings are trapped in a nightmare dimension with no hope of escape. The brutal assault isn’t just mindless violence, either. The killers go to great lengths to inflict as much psychological torture on them as possible, which only exacerbates the familial conflicts.
Just as River begins to feel a bit too familiar, Giuliano, who also wrote the screenplay, ups the ante with new characters that shift the dynamic and introduce more humor into the mix. The violence also cranks it up a notch once we get a full understanding of what is actually going on. Fortunately, River keeps it lean and tight, with satisfying drama and kills that will leave you eager for more, and given the film’s not-so-subtle post-credits tease, more could be exactly what we get.
