Review by Stephanie Scaife
Watching horror screeners can be a bit of a thankless task, especially when they are little known straight-to-DVD titles, so it was a relief to find Across the River to be actually quite good. It would be fair to say that Lorenzo Bianchini’s film won’t be for everyone, as it’s infuriatingly slow at times and it’s not the sort of film where we’re given a lot of explanation. I feel that this works in its favour as all too often we are given lengthy exposition filled and unnecessary dialogue combined with “Boo!” jump scares every five minutes, so it’s refreshing to come across something that is not only a little different but also genuinely scary in places.
Marco (Marco Marchese) is a wildlife researcher working on the Italy/Slovenia border, who sets traps and tags the local animals and monitors their movements using a series of motion sensor cameras. Although these scenes are almost entirely dialogue free and not much happens, they are filmed wonderfully with the colour drained almost entirely from every shot, and the sound design by Davide Piotto is so fantastic that you can pretty much just sit back and relax in this man’s day-to-day existence. However, it isn’t too long until things start to go a bit wrong for Marco… there are screams coming from the woods at night, mysterious garments found floating downstream, and the mauled carcass of a wild pig. Strange things are also showing up on the footage he collects from the motion sensor cameras, with what appears to be two young girls wandering the woodland at night.
It’s actually quite difficult to talk about a film like Across the River, because nothing much really happens, and the things that do happen are best kept quiet for risk of spoiling it. I’ve read some very mixed things online about the film and it will be a challenge for some, especially if you are more inclined to the less subtle aspects of the horror genre, but I found Across the River to be almost hypnotic in its scarcity. By stripping the film of a straightforward narrative it becomes a very different viewing experience, where every action no matter how small has meaning and the tension is so heightened that even the faintest glimmer of a garment behind a tree can suddenly become incredibly creepy. As viewers we’re put right into Marco’s shoes; alone and without any knowledge as to what is happening to us. The score by Stefano Sciascia is also very good, one of the best I’ve heard in a long time actually, and it really elevates the film above being merely a decent horror film into something far more memorable, which is definitely a rarity for the genre.
The film does have some flaws though, there are some odd scenes that don’t really fit in with the rest of the film where we cut to an elderly couple who live locally and who seem to know something about the mysterious goings on in the woods. Who they are or why we occasionally cut to them is somewhat of a mystery to me, perhaps it is merely a way to shoehorn at least some information and dialogue into the film, but I found these scenes a little jarring and they took me out of the main crux of the story around Marco. Overall though, Across the River is one of the stronger genre outputs I’ve seen so far this year and if you like your films to be slow and strange then this may be exactly what you’re looking for.
Across the River is released on Region 2 DVD on 14 July, from Monster Pictures.