The Girl in the River: A Noir Setup That Collapses Into Parody

Brando Benetton's debut film "The Girl in the River" opens with a murder that seems actively begging to be solved. A killer dumps his victim — the 14-year-old daughter of a local political bigwig — into a part of the Mississippi River where she is likely to resurface. He does it from a highly visible bridge. When the detectives arrive, a gun sits in the bushes just yards away. As a colleague observes: "This isn't a clean-up. It's a message."

That message, unfortunately, is the high point. Ralph Macchio and Tiffany Haddish feature in this small-town police procedural, which squanders its intriguing setup on what the Guardian's review calls a ropey and implausible manhunt.

What goes wrong after the opening?

The veteran detective Alan Kramer, played by Devon Sawa, and rookie forensic psychologist Amelia Pembrock, played by Maggie Grace, arrive to investigate the murder. The plot's misdirection sits right there in the open-goal crime scene. A smarter film would use it to pry open the town's community secrets. Benetton instead sends his two leads racing to locate the girl's twin, who is presumably still in the killer's clutches.

Their prime suspect arrives quickly. Local butcher Boris, played by Darron Dunbar, has a sex-pest rap sheet and lives with his mother. That, apparently, ticks all the boxes for a profiling genius such as Pembrock. Kramer pulls her up for being unbothered by the lack of actual prosecutable evidence.

What does this change for the viewer?

Very little, and that is the problem. The review notes that carping is about the only investigative contribution this seasoned criminologist makes. It also questions why a criminologist — defined in the review as a crime sociologist — is out in the field at all.

The result, per the Guardian, plays like noir parody. The film fails to capitalise on the misdirection built into its opening sequence.

The cast and the credibility gap

The credited names raise expectations the film cannot meet:

• Ralph Macchio and Tiffany Haddish head the cast
• Devon Sawa plays veteran detective Alan Kramer
• Maggie Grace plays rookie forensic psychologist Amelia Pembrock
• Darron Dunbar plays Boris, the local butcher who becomes the suspect

The pairing of a hard-bitten detective and a rookie profiler is familiar terrain. Here the formula breaks down because the profiler's deductions rest on stereotype rather than evidence, and the veteran's objections go nowhere.

Benetton's direction shows an instinct for premise but not for payoff. The opening scene stages a puzzle. The remaining film stages a chase with little logic holding it together.

For a debut, the ambitions are clear: small-town America, a river, a body, a twin still missing, a clock ticking. The execution turns those elements into something closer to self-parody than suspense.

Whether Benetton's next project sharpens the storytelling discipline this film lacks will determine if the promising instincts on display here mature into a genuine thriller.