It would be unwise and unfair to expect that Toronto’s genre-led Midnight Madness strand would open with quite the same jolt as it did last year with the record-breaking horror hit Obsession. That film was an outlier in almost every respect, both as it premiered and as it was unleashed on wider crowds, the highest-grossing festival acquisition of all time topping out at over $513m worldwide and sparking genuine Oscar buzz.
But it hasn’t curbed the thirst, or wider speculation, over whether anything might come even remotely close to what Curry Barker achieved and whether the festival might start to rival Sundance as the smartest place for new and exciting horror film-makers to premiere their debut projects. The jury is out with the festival having just begun, but the Midnight strand is off to a far less notable start this time around with the mostly unremarkable survival slasher River, a film directed with flashes of artfulness but written with an overwhelm of familiarity. Writer-director debuts have increasingly tended to follow that pattern (it’s OK not to do everything!) and I think Joshua Giuliano has at least shown enough visual potential here to ably steer someone else’s script to screen next time.
It’s a shame as I do have a soft spot for the rare horror films that centre siblings over romantic pairings or friends, adding a different kind of emotional texture and more intense dramatic stakes to films like Ginger Snaps, House of Wax and, especially, Jeepers Creepers. In River it’s two sisters and a brother, all coming together to scatter their father’s ashes on the, you guessed it, river where he spent most of his days. A more bonded younger sister and brother (Jane Levy and Max Mattern) are still living at the family home and they are joined by their somewhat estranged older sister (Jessica Rothe) who has less fond memories of their late dad. There’s the expected tension before they even get on the boat and through a convoluted set of circumstances, the trio find themselves stranded in the middle of the river. Bad enough without a bloodied guy in a skin mask standing on the bank.
Giuliano starts with a surprisingly artful cold open that expands upon a nifty idea he had for a 2019 short film, which shows us the bloodied aftermath of an abandoned car and plays the sound of what led up to that scene. It’s incredibly effective and, for the genre, incredibly unusual although it does suggest that we might be heading somewhere equally as inventive and as the film unfolds, we find ourselves drifting backward rather than forward. It’s not that River needed to reinvent a very rusty wheel but even when going through the motions, Giuliano can’t quite find the right pacing or energy level to get us inching toward the edge of our seats. It’s just never scary or propulsive enough and despite the tease of some character development at the start, itself a rarity in a slasher, there’s not enough specificity or spark to the sibling dynamic to have us willing them to survive.
It’s comfortable territory for both Levy and Rothe, though, the former enduring all kinds of hell in both Don’t Breathe and 2013’s Evil Dead and the latter being the very best part of the one-trick Happy Death Day series, each deserving of contemporary scream queen status. They make the most of the least, adding edge to often edgeless dialogue, and perhaps some hardcore fans will enjoy them both causing maximum damage in an elongated climax that goes full-on with the body-puncturing, eye-popping, head-removing gore. But Giuliano can’t find them a worthy antagonist because while shirtless 6ft 8in basketball player turned Predator monster Dane DiLiegro certainly has an imposing look (even if he often looks more like he’s going to a Fire Island Halloween party), the film isn’t sure how much or how little we should know about his motivations and backstory. Giuliano opts for the frustrating sour spot in between not enough and too much and none of it is as skin-crawlingly creepy as he seems to think it is. A final mid-credits scene, which brings back the sound device and sets up a cinematic universe we could easily do without, suggests that Giuliano is sure that his River will lead into an ocean. I think he might have already run dry.
River is premiering at the Toronto film festival and will be out in cinemas and available on Shudder in 2027
