‘River’ Review: A Visceral and Satisfying Drift Into the Jaws of Horror! [TIFF]

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.