Keep the River (of Blood) On Your Right

I have a soft spot for horror movies about pretty, awful (meaning both physically pretty and morally awful) people fighting for their lives in beautiful jungles. River of Blood, could your premise be more me?

Quick Plot: Somewhere in southeast Asia (for some reason, that's as specific as we get), white men are plowing down some trees when much more athletic natives take them down. 

It's a river of blood!

Nearby, two attractive couples are enjoying their vacation breakfast at a luxury resort before heading out for a boat -- excuse me, kayak -- excursion with tour guide Nick. Ritchie has just sold his company and is eager to lord it over the bitter Ajay. Ajay is having an affair with Ritchie's wife Jasmine and is eager to keep it quiet so he can hold onto his job working for his wife Maya's father. 

Do all attractive person friendships involve so much backstabbing and bitterness? Or is this just a White Lotus effect?

The couples embark down the river under Nick's guidance with strict warnings about the dangers of the nearby cannibal tribes, who not only hunt outsiders, but do so in a slow, terrorizing way to keep their prey alive for training purposes. 

You can guess where it goes from here. 

Written by Tom Boyle and directed by Howard J. Ford, River of Blood is a tricky sort of film. Much like Ford's The Ledge and The Dead series, it's shot beautifully and seems to have great reverence for just how powerful its setting is on film. As an actual viewing experience, it's quite lovely to look at.

The characters, on the other hand, are pretty darn challenging. 

From a performance perspective, everyone is doing their job. But couldn't their blueprint be better?

Louis James's Ajay is one of the most insufferable characters I've seen onscreen in quite a while. Again, the acting is FINE. But why do I have to watch him play THIS PERSON? 

I know what you're thinking: so we can root for him to experience a ridiculously elaborate and painful death. Well...

SPOILER ALERT

One of the strange things about River of Blood is the actual pacing of its latter half. We expect our quintet to start shrinking til we keep a final girl or two, but instead, for all the buildup of how this tribe plays with its prey, we get two fairly quick, low tension kills and one dramatic self-sacrifice that doesn't add up when you do the fight math. 

There's something slightly admirable about River of Blood ending with an otherwise irredeemable (and always insufferable) character making a selfless decision. But this movie isn't really complex enough to make that hit. I spend 88 minutes hating Ajay and powering through the action knowing that surely, he'd get a violent comeuppance. Instead, he makes a noble decision that has that-Titanic-raft-could-have-held-Jack logic to it and we barely see him suffer. Come on!

High Points

Did I mention that River of Blood looks really, really good?

Low Points

Did I mention that the characters in River of Blood are incredibly unlikable?

Lessons Learned

Karma means that even if you can't find a bowl of rice in the jungle, if you're a horrible person, your cell phone can be dried out just in time to reveal your secrets

Blond hair does incredibly well in humid southeast Asian jungles

Baby pythons are harmless and also rather adorable

Rent/Bury/Buy

I watched most of River of Blood on an elliptical machine at the gym, because few things are more motivating for a workout than a movie where fairly fit people are put to a physical test to not be eaten (my fear of cannibals is merited because I'm fairly certain my foodie appetite means that I would be absolutely delicious). As that kind of watch, this was entertaining. It's also frustrating, especially being now the fourth Ford film I've seen where I've found myself wishing it focused on characters that weren't so stomach turning. Make of that what you will! The movie is streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Go Tell It On a Mountain

One of my favorite background viewing options is I Shouldn't Be Alive, a docu-series that interviews survivors of near-death experiences as reenactments walk us through their insane battles with the elements. There's an element of wonder at what the human body can do when tested, as well as the occasional satisfaction at the comeuppance earned by brash young people underestimating the natural world. On that note, whenever an episode involves rock climbing, I tend to make a double serving of popcorn. Of COURSE you're going to have near-death experiences when your tiny human hands are carrying the rest of your body over even tinier grooves!

Hence, I tend to dig the survivalist horror genre, particularly when it might involve craggy rocks. 

Quick Plot: Sophie brings sad pal Kelly to the Dolomites for an intensive hike, where their cabin neighbors turn out to be fellow Americans. Josh, the alpha of the male quartet, cheats on his fiancee and tosses around homophobic slurs like it's 1993. His friends are far from amused, but since Josh has been collecting potential blackmail material on them for 20 years, they grin and bear it. 

The group parties around a campfire, Sophie getting progressively drunker and higher and with that, flirtier to Josh. She also playfully jabs at his manhood (which goes as well as expected). Josh follows her to the woods and attempts an assault. His pals break it up, but the damage is done. Sophie now poses a threat, and that's all it takes for Josh to push her off a cliff and convince his friends to bash her head in with a rock.

The resourceful Kelly captures it on camera and manages to retrieve her half-packed gear bag before fleeing to the gorges. The men, who are less experienced climbers but better equipped, are hot on her blistered heels. 

Kelly turns inward to stay alive. One year earlier, she lost her fiance in a, dare I say, comical accident on that very hill. Luca taught her everything she knew about navigating those rocks, but as he went to reach for the engagement ring in a poorly timed proposal, he plummeted to his death. Think that Ace Ventura opening that parodied Cliffhanger. 

The guys share their own terrible memories. Some time earlier, they teamed up for a hate crime, like dudes apparently do. Today, their consciences sit at various stages of morality, though none as comically evil as Josh.

Played by the titular Christmas Prince Ben Lamb, Josh is a bit ridiculous as a villain, but thankfully, The Ledge seems to agree. His friends genuinely hate him. That doesn't make it fun for US to listen to his sexist, racist rants, but at least we can somewhat trust that the movie is also rolling its eyes. 

The Ledge is directed by The Dead's Howard J. Ford, who carved out his (and brother's) own unique genre niche with his pair of zombie films. Similarly, The Ledge shares a great eye for the natural environment. The actual mountain climb is efficiently intense, and lead Brittany Ashworth (the teen daughter from the woefully underseen Exhibit A) makes for a believably athletic final girl.

All of that shouldn't REALLY suggest that The Ledge is a good film. Between the uneven script and discomfort in some of the performances, it ust can't seem to find its own rhythm. The opening makes virtually all of the characters insufferable in how they talk to one another, and while I appreciate how the film seems to see these men for the worthlessly weak-to-blatantly-evil characters they are, the actual execution of their own inner drama just never clicks into place. 

And yet, at a certain point, I knew that I was enjoying The Ledge. It looks great, it moves fast, and by its brief 86th minute, I had mostly received what was advertised. 

High Points

Rock climbing is hard. Based on the two times I encountered one of those kid-walls in 5K with obstacles, I'd even say IMPOSSIBLE. By far, the best thing about The Ledge is that it gets close to the action. I have no idea how accurate the dynamics of Kelly's climb are to an experienced athlete, but Ford's camera makes it feel alive, hard, and terrifying

Low Points

As mentioned, the actual dynamic of these four men is so insufferable that it makes much of the film incredibly unpleasant

Lessons Learned

Telling a hot chick you just met that she shares a name with your mother is not the hot pickup line you hear in your head

Nothing heals a broken leg faster than guzzling a dozen painkillers at once and chasing them down with foamy whiskey

Climbing is best described as chess mixed with ballet

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Ledge has a LOT of problems, but if you're in the mood for a survivalist slasher set on a mountain, you probably can't do much better. Find it on Hulu if the mood strikes.