River turns family anxiety into a slasher on a remote river
Filmmaker Joshua Giuliano built his debut horror feature from the dark thoughts that hit him on the road home to see family.
Giuliano told Deadline that River was inspired by anxiety visions of family members dying in horrible ways when he travelled home. He described the film as a way to put his anxiety about complicated family relationships into a cinematic format.
River is a survival slasher, a horror story where the characters must outlast an attacker. It follows three siblings scattering their father's ashes on a remote river. Their boat breaks down. Then a faceless killer starts hunting them.
The film stars Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe, the pair at the centre of that river trip. Levy and Rothe appeared with Giuliano alongside co-stars Max Mattern and Dane DiLiegro for a Deadline Studio panel at the Toronto International Film Festival.
That conversation followed the film's first screening on Thursday, Sept. 10 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. In the United States, the film will be released by Independent Film Company and Shudder, the horror streaming service. It is a Shudder Original Production.
River opened the festival's 2026 Midnight Madness programme, according to TIFF. Midnight Madness is TIFF's late-night section for horror, action and other genre films. The slot is known for loud crowds and late shows.
What makes this stand out is how directly Giuliano links the scares to family life. The killer and the broken boat drive the plot. The pressure underneath comes from three siblings stuck together after a death.
Giuliano grew up in the cornfields of Indiana, according to his TIFF biography. He studied film at Taylor University before moving to Los Angeles to attend the American Film Institute. Before River, he directed short films including The Flesh of My Lovers and Vampire.
