Following her mother’s death, River Allen finds herself spiraling out of control. When she disappears for more than a week, with no recollection of how she returned home, River loses all sense of self and purpose. Disturbing, nightmarish images haunt her mind and she believes that she has lost her grip on reality. While River assumes this is due to her overwhelming grief for her departed mother, a darker, undiscovered secret taunts her.
“River,” directed by Emily Skye, is a sci-fi drama following a young adult named River and her journey through grief when her mother passes away suddenly. While her mother’s death was ruled a suicide, River believes otherwise as she starts to experience a series of mysterious occurrences like hearing her mother’s voice or disappearing into the woods without a single recollection of what happened. Despite attempting to create a series of suspenseful and mysterious plot triggers, the film is overdramatic with its cringe-worthy acting sequences and overuse of slow-motion, blue-tint filters.
May Cameron Rogers plays River with little depth as her character continues to encounter confusion after confusion following the tragic death of her mother. Rogers’ acting response time to new learned plot elements is slow and comes across too calculated to be considered natural and emotionally evoking. Rather, Rogers’ pace of grief expression is almost mechanical, making it hard to invest in her character’s trauma and poor attempt at understanding the tragedy that befalls her later into the film. Furthermore, Roger’s narration makes watching the film a more irritable experience – not only due to poor dialogue structure but also due to the hollow way she reads for her internal monologue of confusion.
Alexandra Rose plays Amanda with startling natural expressions when first introduced in the film but fails to carry over that ability as her character is forced to adopt more and more mystery to match the plot vision of Emily Skye. As unnatural as her character’s entrances throughout the film, Rose’s discomfort is palpable in her own manifestation of Amanda, creating an overarching uncomfortable experience as all the actors lose chemistry with each other in every passing scene.
“River” is not a film that utilizes any new elements to redefine what it means to create a sci-fi film filled with suspense. Rather, it sticks to common production formulas like slow-motion, filtered blue as a form of production discoloration representing grief, and background music that would be much more befitting in a “Blade Runner” movie than a psychological thriller exploring extreme mental confusion defined by grief. Furthermore, the stereotypical use of a psychiatrist in moments of extreme mental relapse perpetuates the stigma about mental health – a strategy that one can call outdated in a time when media representation and its strategies are scrutinized due to its over-reaching subliminal effects. Therapy is not only for the crazy and “River” is just not for avid sci-fi thriller fans.
Now available on Video On Demand
terrible film lol