Across the River

Across the River
Captured on camera iin Across the River
Across the River
Across the River

Aka Oltre il guado
Director: Lorenzo Bianchini
Writers: Lorenzo Bianchini, Michela Bianchini
Stars: Renzo Gariup, Marco Marchese, Lidia Zabrieszach

To start with, it’s worth elaborating upon a central dichotomy in the Italian horror film which has been ever present since the glory days when Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda were plying their trade. On the one hand you have the rural horror film in which (generally) someone from the city ventures into the remote countryside and runs into some kind of terrifying situation (whether the cause be supernatural or very human). On the other you have the urban horror film, movies set in the city where the danger comes very much out of the metropolitan situation. In the sixties the rural horror film was prevalent, in the seventies as the giallo became fashionable the urban horror film took ascendancy. In recent years just about the only films being made in Italy are rural horror films, with recent examples including Shadow and In the Market.

Across the River is very much a rural horror film, and it also happens to be one of the very best Italian genre releases for many a year (not, in all honesty, that there’s much competition). Marco Marchese plays a naturalist carrying out a census of the wildlife in a remote and mountainous area on the Italo-Slovenian border. His job involves setting traps to capture animals, reviewing the footage from motion-triggered cameras and generally monitoring other activity in the area. Unfortunately, his visit also corresponds with an extended period of bad weather and he’s trapped on the wrong side of a suddenly overflowing river. Here he finds an abandoned village where there are signs of life that are… unusual: chewed up animal bones, wild boar corpses, a roomful of billowing and bloodstained sheets. But what is it that’s living there, and will our protagonist discover what it is before it discovers him?

Having made his name with a couple of promising if low budget productions (Custodes bestiae (2004) and Occhi (2010), this is director Lorenzo Bianchini’s highest-profile release to date – it even had an English language release, which is unusual for Italian films nowadays. It was still very obviously made with limited means: for much of the running time it’s a single-hander, filmed guerrilla style on location and using some home-built sets. But it manages to overcome these constraints and, to some extent, even benefits from them; what with its minimal story and limited characters the accent is on atmosphere, and it manages to effectively conjure up an authentic sense of dread for much of the running time. It is, in other words, genuinely creepy, even when all that’s happening is Marchese pottering around the woods or sleeping in his camper van.

On the negative side, some of the supporting performances are poor (although Marchese does a good job in what appears to be his only film role to date) and there’s a little too much reliance on found footage, even if this is perhaps more relevant and less gimmicky than in many other productions. The influence of The Blair Witch Project is tangible, but this is a more interesting and intelligent film which also reminded me – in terms of tone – of Nacho Cerdà’s 2006 release The Abandoned. It’s also very slow, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but, in this age of lightning paced editing, it is unusual; from my perspective this is a positive thing, but others might not agree. It’s not perfect, but well worth seeking out.

About Matt Blake 890 Articles
The WildEye is a blog dedicated to the wild world of Italian cinema (and, ok, sometimes I digress into discussing films from other countries as well). Peplums, comedies, dramas, spaghetti westerns... they're all covered here.

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