“It’ll be fun. Nice change of pace.”

I’m not quite sure why River Wild was made, or why somehow decided almost three decades later was the right time to film a spiritual remake of the 1994 film The River Wild. The subtle change in title feels like Sean Parker’s The Social Network character suggesting dropping the “the” from Facebook for a cleaner title, and in many ways, that same change seems to echo through the rest of the picture. It’s not as engaging or enthralling as the original movie, but the performances are solid and the physicality of the action is impressive. It’s a good, easy, palatable throwback to when movies could be small and specific. Not everything can or should be a blockbuster.

River Wild initially has a similar vibe to The Shallows starring Blake Lively (the Gossip Girl connection is entirely coincidental), showing us Joey Reese (Leighton Meester) ignore phone calls as she drives towards a place we can tell she’s been before. There she’s greeted by big brother Gray (Taran Killam of SNL fame, a bit unrecognizable at first but well cast), and we feel her secondhand fear as she catches a glimpse of Trevor (Adam Brody) in the background. Trevor is heavily tatted, a little erratic, and Brody plays him as a snaky man who’s a bit too obviously untrustworthy and easily profiled based on his appearance. There’s history between these three, and things dig deeper as Joey joins the two on a whitewater adventure with two paying female customers. It’s easygoing until it’s not.

The film differentiates itself from the onset; in 1994 the open featured Meryl Streep solo rowing in smooth strides, and in 2023 the picture opens with a foreboding and loud waterfall. It’s the way a horror or psychological thriller might begin, but River Wild is neither, and leans into the survival features we so often used to get in the 90’s and sometimes have seen in the tiniest Indie spaces recently. River Wild is an adept blend of the two; it’s a callback to how movies once were, but it’s not starring A-listers either. It’s finessed, sharp, and doesn’t waste time with it’s story. If anything it might rush action and drama in the third act, but perhaps that’s par the course when the current picks up and there’s no fighting where things are going to take you.

There are layers to the tight-lipped, efficient, at times ambitious River Wild, and it’s one of the very few movies I’ve recently sat through and wondered how much better it might have been with a little more time and patience. It dares to shoot action at night, with big sequences happening out on the water. The script is lean but strong like a well trained athlete, and the character development is there whilst saying very little about a shared past that’s so obviously dirty and grimy. And most surprisingly, this little movie challenges the strength of old bonds, showing us that the same people who can be seen as good and likable can also be abusive and deadly when their own well-being is questioned. It has a stronger moral compass than most pictures of its kind.

“What did you do?”

Rating: 3.5 out of 5