River (2026) Movie Review: No Motive, No Mercy

A slasher stripped to its bones. No motive, no mercy, no cell service. Joshua Giuliano’s debut, River, opened TIFF Midnight Madness with a bang.

His feature debut opened TIFF 2026’s Midnight Madness, and within minutes I was reminded why a good slasher doesn’t need to reinvent the genre. It just needs to know exactly what to do with it.

Lucy (Jane Levy, of Don’t Breathe), Carla (Jessica Rothe, of Happy Death Day) and Drew (Max Mattern, of Cape Fear) reunite to scatter their father’s ashes at his favorite spot along a remote West Virginia river. The family baggage comes with them. Old resentments surface, the boat stops cooperating, and suddenly getting home isn’t as simple as turning the engine back on. There’s no cell service, nobody nearby and a strange figure watching them from shore.

Giuliano makes a smart choice by not rushing to the good stuff. The first half spends real time with these siblings, letting us understand why they’re irritated with each other before forcing them to depend on one another. Levy and Rothe are terrific here. Their characters can turn a normal conversation into a fight without raising their voices, and when survival takes over, both actresses make the physical transformation believable. They don’t become action heroes. They become desperate people who realize they don’t have another option.

Mattern is just as important. Drew could easily have been the disposable brother in a lesser slasher, but he gives the character an awkward sweetness that makes you want him to stick around. Then there’s The Man (Dane DiLiegro, of Prey), who gets almost no explanation and doesn’t need one. The flesh-colored mask was made from a mold of DiLiegro’s own face, while those bright yellow swim trunks give him an oddly specific look. It sounds ridiculous on paper. Onscreen, you won’t forget him.

The filmmaking is where Giuliano really earns the confidence he’s showing. He and cinematographer Nick Matthews turn West Virginia into a gorgeous trap. Rolling Appalachian hills, a derelict railroad bridge and steam rising from the Monongahela at night make the setting beautiful without making it feel safe. The contrast matters because the movie isn’t hiding its violence behind murky photography. When something awful happens, you can see where it happens.

A lot of that physicality came from the production itself. The crew shot on actual water, including a protected lake where gas motors weren’t allowed. They had to tow the picture boat by hand, while the camera boat could only manage about two miles per hour. Rothe actually swam faster than it. Those limitations could have made the movie feel constrained. Instead, they give the action a tangible quality that’s increasingly rare in studio horror. You can feel the physicality of what you’re watching.

The sound work is equally effective. Giuliano understands that hearing something without seeing it can make your imagination do the dirty work. Mondo Boys’ score keeps the tension moving without announcing every scare, and editor Thom Newell knows when to let a moment breathe before pulling the rug out. Little details matter, too. More than once, something I had dismissed as background information came roaring back into the story. That’s what had me biting my knuckle. Not every scare is a surprise, but River kept me guessing about what would happen next and who would get there alive. I thought I had it figured out more than once. I didn’t.

Giuliano has said he wanted a stripped-down slasher built around characters worth caring about, a great location and a terrifying villain. That’s exactly what he made. There’s also a personal reason the family dynamic hits harder: Giuliano drew from his own anxiety about imagining terrible things happening to people he loves.

River isn’t trying to reinvent the slasher. It understands something more useful: if you make me care about the people in the boat, you don’t have to work nearly as hard to scare the hell out of me when something starts swimming toward them.

River (2026) had its World Premiere at TIFF on September 10, 2026. will be released in US theatres on and in UK & Irish cinemas on