Across the River

In den Bergen muss Willems Dafoas verlorener Bruder in einem verlassenen Dorf übernachten, wo er allmählich verfällt und mit einer Schrotflinte zwei aufdringliche Geister jagt. Und dabei pinkelt er und pinkelt... ich meine das Wetter, nicht den Helden. Die andere Version hatte 87 Minuten, aber sie schien mir etwas zu langgezogen. Das Ende lieferte jedoch eine ordentliche Horrorgenugtuung. (07.10.2014)

I postponed watching this movie for eight years, but in the end, I gave it a chance and it turned out exactly as I had hoped. Unfortunately, I cannot appreciate this. Across the River is extremely slow, cheap and uninteresting horror where there is no dialogue and nothing happens at all. I don't see a reason why I should watch a man smoke, drink, sit, sleep, and warm his hands by the fire, this wouldn't pass as drama, let alone horror. It seems to me that for some people, the word "atmospheric" is synonymous with boring and unexciting. If at least there were some scary moments, but it's not suspenseful, entertaining, or interesting in any way. No gore, no jump-scares, no apparitions. The screenplay is missing, the visuals are terrible, the acting is nothing special, and even the atmosphere didn't seem very unpleasant to me. I'm trying to find something positive about this movie, but no matter how hard I look, I can't find anything. Artsy film for a niche audience. Story**, Action>No, Humor>No, Violence*, Entertainment**, Music***, Visuals**, Atmosphere***, Tension*. 3/10. (26.01.2021)

If we were at psych exams with William Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, we'd give her plenty of high-fives, because no graveyard, temple, ruin, dungeon, or haunted house can trump the night forest in its eeriness. And that's probably why even though it's basically the total foundation and crux of horror, Across the River simply works. Economical means, a single protagonist, deep woods on the Italian-Slovenian border, and two nasty little flesh-eating hookers. And while it's not found footage, the technical means and the way it's shot make it essentially found footage. There are definitely worse ways to spend your time. (09.10.2014)

Big warning for anyone who doesn’t like slow-burners (horror films where not much happens)! Avoid this film, because in this sense it’s extreme. Nothing happens, hardly anyone speaks (I doubt there were even fifty sentences in that hour and a half), the script had two pages, if there was any script to begin with. Nevertheless, it’s very atmospherically shot, with very atmospheric sound, it takes place in a nice horror setting (an abandoned mountain village) and in a nice time for horror (night, fog, rain). It doesn’t play with anything but atmosphere, but for me it was more than enough given the circumstances – a production with low budget, if any budget at all, without many of those annoying things typical of such productions, like bad actors, clumsy editing and attempts at special effects. This film made me very happy and I’m looking forward to the director’s next projects, but I will not recommend it to most other people. It would terribly bore ten out of nine random viewers. (02.10.2014)

I must say that I wasn’t expecting such an atmospheric horror. I knew neither the director nor the actors (well, actor), who might not have even played in anything yet. On the other hand, what would he play in if he didn’t even talk much…? However, the mostly silent story was made up for by the gorgeous environment of the Julian Alpson the Slovenian borders and the absolutely brutally mysterious atmosphere. It was so good combined with the music that I spent an hour and a half just staring at the screen without making a single sound. It’s been a long time since a movie hypnotized me like this and that’s exactly why this piece deserves my high praise. I watched this for the Challenge Tour 2015. (09.04.2015)