"River Wild" is a good rendition of a great thriller

River Wild (2023)

Axing the “the” from 1994’s thrilling, expertly acted Meryl Streep-Kevin Bacon starrer “The River Wild,” “River Wild” is a surprisingly rock-solid remake. And by remake, we mean, familial characters must survive a whitewater rafting trip with a psychopath. Writer-director Ben Ketai and co-writer Mike Nguyen Le change up the story and character details that feel fully written with enough breathing room, all at a tighter run time. The filmmakers find their own way in with the material, and the results are plenty harrowing that one luckily never questions the existence of this “River Wild.”

Leighton Meester, Taran Killam, and Adam Brody may not be Meryl Streep, David Strathairn, and Kevin Bacon—none of us are, unfortunately—but they’re all quite capable in their own right. In lieu of a family of three and two strangers, estranged sister Joey (Meester) joins brother Gray (Killam), an experienced river guide, on a whitewater rafting trip with two U.K. tourists, Karissa (Olivia Swann) and Van (Eve Connolly). She’s stunned to realize that Gray’s childhood friend Trevor (Brody), a felon who’s freshly out of prison, is also a guide and accompanying them down the river. After the group of five camps out for the night, one of the tourists gets severely injured. Joey does what she can, but they need to get her to the nearest hospital. Trevor seems to be the only one who doesn’t want that to happen, and everyone must go into survival mode.

In this version, our heroine is not a rapids navigator, but she is a doctor. Joey’s brother knows the river instead, but then again, so does our bad guy, an old friend rather than a “nice guy” stranger. There is clearer motivation for our bad guy this time since there’s already a preexisting relationship within the group. Initially, one has to do a lot of inferring about the dynamic here. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com.

Grade: B

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released "River Wild" (85 min.) on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Netflix on August 1, 2023.