This Insanely Inventive Thriller Is Terrifying the Toronto Film Festival

Courtesy of TIFF There are a million and one ways for a horror movie to terrify—and after more than a century, the genre continues to thrive precisely because creative artists keep devising new methods of staging murder and mayhem.

Add River to that esteemed list, as Joshua Giuliano’s feature debut distinguishes its psycho-killer premise with an inventive form that exploits what’s seen and heard (and what’s not) to frightening effect.

Like this summer’s nightmarish breakouts ( Obsession , Backrooms , Hokum ) and also 2024’s kindred spirit In a Violent Nature , it elevates a tried-and-true formula through clever artistry—as well as a memorable fiend, a handful of gruesome slayings, and penetrating performances from Don’t Breathe ’s Jane Levy and Happy Death Day ’s Jessica Rothe, two formidable and riveting screen queens.

Premiering in the Midnight Madness section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, River establishes its fascination with image and sound from the outset.

As Giuliano’s camera glides in and around an abandoned Ford Mustang in the middle of the woods, the voices of the young man and woman who drove it to this remote spot are heard talking on the soundtrack, their chitchat, beer-drinking, and fooling around juxtaposed with what resembles a fresh crime scene.

The disconnect between video and audio is paralleled by the divide between the past and the present, and it’s not until the very end of this bravura sequence that the dissonance is (temporarily) resolved with jarring impact.

There’s a maniac on the loose in River , although he’s not on the radar of Lucy (Levy), who’s at her childhood home with her layabout younger brother Drew (Max Mattern), waiting for the arrival of older sister Carla (Rothe), who skipped town years earlier.

From the moment they lock eyes, tensions run high between Lucy and Carla, and repeated references to their recently departed father—whose empty beer cans still litter his motorboat—indicate that he’s the source of their rupture.

Their first testy evening together only heightens their estrangement, and their sniping persists the following day when all three take the boat to the river they used to frequent with their dad to say goodbye to him and spread his ashes.

The makeshift ceremony Lucy leads does not, predictably, go as planned, reopening old wounds about their dad and mom, about whom Lucy and Carla have differing and contentious opinions.

A more pressing concern, however, becomes their boat’s lack of gas—the byproduct of Carla driving over something that dislodged their fuel line.

A deep-focus shot of the craft suggests a torso may have been the struck object, but as is frequently the case, River tantalizes through quick, obscured glimpses of horrors and the monsters perpetrating them.