The River WildMovies like The River Wild
- Key Features:
- Survival, Family dynamics, Criminals, Hostage situation, Thriller, Mother-son relationship, Marital relationship, Adventure, Desperation, Betrayal, Montana, Wilderness, Escalating tension, Resourcefulness
- Tone:
- suspense-driven, serious
- Target Audience:
- Thrill-seekers, Outdoor adventure enthusiasts, Fans of suspenseful narratives, Viewers interested in family dynamics
- Emotional Arc:
- Anticipation → Fear → Relief
The River Wild

Gail and Tom Hartman are struggling to stay together and decide to take a white-water rafting holiday adventure in Montana for their son Roarke's 10th birthday, only to meet up with a pair of mysterious men whose desperation grows, turning their vacation into a nightmare.
The River Wild
Follows a pair of siblings who love but distrust each other as they embark on a white-water rafting trip with a small group. One of their friends from childhood turns out to be more dangerous than he appears.

14-year-old Joe is the only child of Jeanette and Jerry — a housewife and a golf pro — in a small town in 1960s Montana. Nearby, an uncontrolled forest fire rages close to the Canadian border, and when Jerry loses his job (and his sense of purpose) he decides to join the cause of fighting the fire, leaving his wife and son to fend for themselves.

When the experienced guide Vic accompanies the city boy Alan and his three friends on their first wilderness experience, he not only hopes to teach the four boys lessons about the wilderness, but about themselves. Vic pushes them to the limit. Soon after alienating the boys, Vic finds himself in desperate need of help and must rely on his students in order to survive.

Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.

Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.

Frank Morrison is a divorced father with a 12-year-old son, Danny. His ex-wife Susan and son Danny now live with Rick Barnes, Susan's new husband. Danny, who has a reputation for telling lies, accuses his stepfather of committing a murder. Initially, no one believes his accusations, but then Frank becomes convinced and is the only one who believes him. Now, the father Danny trusts must protect him from the stepfather he fears.

An itinerant farmer and his young son help a heart-of-gold saloon singer search for her estranged husband.

A young man abandons his family for a solitary life of fly-fishing. His goal was to find his own way in the fishing world and thereby find himself and love.

Four kayakers take the wrong river into a jungle inhabited by a tribe of merciless cannibals.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones and, when the snow falls, it is gray. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.

When affluent executive Wayne Hayes is kidnapped by a disgruntled employee and held for ransom in a forest, Wayne’s wife is forced to reckon with the FBI agents as they negotiate with the kidnapper.

A city teen travels to Montana to go hunting with his estranged father, only for the strained trip to become a battle for survival when they encounter a grizzly bear.

An American family on holiday in Africa becomes lost in a game reserve and stalked by vicious killer lions.

It's vacation time for outdoorsy Chicago man Chet Ripley, along with his wife, Connie, and their two kids, Buck and Ben. But a serene weekend of fishing at a Wisconsin lakeside cabin gets crashed by Connie's obnoxious brother-in-law, Roman Craig, his wife, Kate, and the couple's two daughters. As the excursion wears on, the Ripleys find themselves at odds with the stuffy Craig family.

A group of people on a rafting excursion happen upon a deserted town and decide to set up camp. Out of the blue, a murder occurs.

A local guide is asked to lead a group of influencers along the river of a remote valley. As they get deeper into the wilderness, their venture takes a frightening turn.

The Maclean brothers, Paul and Norman, live a relatively idyllic life in rural Montana, spending much of their time fly fishing. The sons of a minister, the boys eventually part company when Norman moves east to attend college, leaving his rebellious brother to find trouble back home. When Norman finally returns, the siblings resume their fishing outings, and assess where they've been and where they're going.

The Munns, father John and sons Chris and Tim, recede to the woods of rural Georgia. Their life together is forever changed with the arrival of Uncle Deel, though the tragedy that follows forces troubled Chris to become a man.

Billy, a single mother of two, is led into a macabre underworld while her teenage son, Bones, discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery if their family is to survive.

A determined father risks everything to rescue a dedicated teacher and her students from a raging wildfire.

Two tough Kentucky mountaineers join a trading expedition from St. Louis up the Missouri River to trade whisky for furs with the Blackfoot Indians. They soon discover that there is much more than the elements to contend with.

For ten years, engineer Bill Markham has searched tirelessly for his son Tommy who disappeared from the edge of the Brazilian rainforest. Miraculously, he finds the boy living among the reclusive Amazon tribe who adopted him. And that's when Bill's adventure truly begins. For his son is now a grown tribesman who moves skillfully through this beautiful-but-dangerous terrain, fearful only of those who would exploit it. And as Bill attempts to "rescue" him from the savagery of the untamed jungle, Tommy challenges Bill's idea of true civilization and his notions about who needs rescuing.

An FBI agent teams with the town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.

A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of a stubborn octogenarian from her home on an island in the river, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.

In the quiet waters of the Mississippi, body parts are being discovered. No one knows what is behind it all, until a huge man eating bull shark turns up. This bull shark is different, as it can breath in fresh water, making a deadly encounter between anyone who comes before it. John Sanders must now try and reach the surface, with his ex-wife and whilst being held hostage.

A survival story about a honeymooning couple who get lost in the wide expanse of the Grand Canyon.

Nate takes his family for a camping trip to reconnect. When they pull off at a rest stop, a gang of thieves hides their stash from an armored car robbery among the family belongings. They soon find themselves on the run and the gang will stop at nothing to get their money back.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

Cozy, a dissatisfied housewife, meets Lee at a bar. A drink turns into a home break-in, and a gunshot sends them on the run together, thinking they've committed murder.

The mother of a severely traumatized daughter enlists the aid of a unique horse trainer to help the girl's equally injured horse.

A woman with a tragic past decides to start her new life by hiking for one thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail.

Recently divorced mom Lauren and widowed dad Jim let their friends push them into a blind date, which goes disastrously wrong. Unsurprisingly, neither wants to see the other ever again. However, fate intervenes when both Jim and Lauren, unbeknownst to each other, purchase one-half of the same vacation package at a South African resort for families, during spring break. They and their children are forced to share the same romantic suite and participate in a slew of family activities together.

An Australian couple takes a sailing trip in the Pacific to get over the recent loss of their son. While on the open sea, they come across a sinking ship with one survivor who is not at all what he seems.

After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

A mother and her son plan a surprise visit to Los Angeles to see her husband/his father. Halfway there they get into a terrible accident in the middle of nowhere and now must fight to survive.

A divorced dad and his ex-con brother resort to a desperate scheme in order to save their family's farm in West Texas.

Barely escaping an avalanche during a family ski vacation in the Alps, a married couple is thrown into disarray as they are forced to reevaluate their lives and how they feel about each other.

A doctor desperately tries to save his wife and their 5 year old son after their vacation in the Bahamas takes an unexpected turn.

When the son of a successful judge is killed by two police officers and the system sets them free, a hardened veteran detective finds some incriminating files on the officers and the judge teams up with another mourning father to take the law into his own hands.

Out on parole after 8 years inside Bill Hayward returns home to find his now 11 and 15 year old sons abandoned by their mother and fending for themselves. Unwilling to play Dad, an uncaring Bill is determined to move on.

Fourteen-year-old Mackenzie is sent to live with her uncle in Juneau when her mother can’t care for her anymore. The living situation quickly takes a turn for the worse, and she runs away to rejoin her mother in Seattle. While on her dangerous journey of sleeping in cars and breaking into hotel rooms, she’s drawn to Rene, a lonesome backpacker looking for tranquility in the wilderness.

Two teenage boys find a fugitive hiding out on an island in the Mississippi River and help him reunite with his lover and escape an avenging family and their armed posse.

Jack Halsey takes his wife, their adult kids, and a friend for a dream vacation in Kenya. But as they venture off alone into a wilderness park, their safari van is flipped over by an angry rhino, leaving them injured and desperate. Then, as two of them go in search of rescue, a bloody, vicious encounter with a leopard and a clan of hyenas incites a desperate fight for survival.

Ben Archer is not happy. His mother, Sandy, has just met a man, and it looks like things are pretty serious. Driven by a fear of abandonment, Ben tries anything and everything to ruin the "love bubble" which surrounds his mom. However, after Ben and Jack's experiences in the Indian Guides, the two become much closer.

In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.

A group of settlers traveling through the Oregon High Desert in 1845 find themselves stranded in harsh conditions.

When her boyfriend dumps Emily, a spontaneous woman in her 30s, she persuades her ultra-cautious mom to accompany her on a vacation to Ecuador. When these two very different women are trapped on this wild journey, their bond as mother and daughter is tested and strengthened while they attempt to navigate the jungle and escape.

A recently widowed traveler is kidnapped by a cold blooded killer, only to escape into the wilderness where she is forced to battle against the elements as her pursuer closes in on her.

When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon -- or something even more sinister?

A free-spirited woman "kidnaps" a yuppie for a weekend of adventure. But the fun quickly takes a dangerous turn when her ex-con husband shows up.

Climbing aboard their mammoth recreational vehicle for a cross-country road trip to the Colorado Rockies, the Munro family – led by dysfunctional patriarch, Bob – prepares for the adventure of a lifetime. But spending two weeks together in one seriously small space has a way of cramping their style.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Jim Rhodes is a tough divorcée mourning the loss of his murdered partner while struggling to raise his rebellious daughter in the mountains of Montana. But when a crew of trigger-happy fugitives takes Rhodes and his daughter hostage, the rugged wilderness will explode in all-terrain vengeance. Is there any wounded animal more dangerous than a lawman left for dead?

Two brothers cannot overcome their opposite perceptions of life. One brother sees and feels bad in everyone and everything, subsequently he is violent, antisocial and unable to appreciate or enjoy the good things which his brother desperately tries to point out to him.

After running out of money while backpacking in a tiny, male-dominated town in the Australian outback, two friends resort to a working holiday at the Royal Hotel. When the locals' behavior starts crossing the line, the girls find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.

Following the loss of their son, a retired sheriff and his wife leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas.

Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.

A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother's new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.

The relationships among two pre-pubescent brothers and their estranged father are tested on a trip into the Russian wilderness.

When a young woman takes a trip down Rogue River, her car mysteriously disappears. Lost without transport or communication, she accepts the hospitality of a stranger who offers her shelter for the night at his cabin. With no other options available, she reluctantly accepts only to forever regret it. The ensuing hours yield nothing but torture, indescribable pain, and horrific agony. If you've seen Misery, you've seen nothing. This movie starts where horror films end and leaves viewers paralysed by fear and disgust.

A star of hunting videos strives to bond with his 12-year-old son on a wilderness trip but learns familial connections can't be forced.

A naive California teen plans to remain above the fray at his Nebraskan family reunion, but a strange encounter places him at the center of a long-buried family secret.

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.

The new film by French director Cédric Kahn focusses on Philippe Fournier, a man who lives with his 2 sons, having decided not to give them back to their mother after she won custody of the children. The children Okyesa and Tsali must grow up in the shadow, hunted by the police but always free and on the move.

When teen-socialite Kelly Van Ryan and troubled bad girl Suzie Toller accuse guidance counselor Sam Lombardo of rape, he's suspended by the school, rejected by the town, and fighting to get his life back. One cop suspects conspiracy, but nothing is what it seems...

Although theorised, no one is really ready when a mountain pass above the scenic and narrow Geiranger fjord in Norway collapses and creates a tsunami over 300 feet high. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.

A young boy finds himself pursued by two assassins in the Montana wilderness, with a survival expert determined to protect him, and a forest fire threatening to consume them all.

A geologist races against time to save his estranged wife and two children when a devastating earthquake strikes Oslo, Norway.

A clash between fishermen and poachers is surging on the Po river Delta. A local group of volunteers lead by Osso wants to save the river from overfishing and defend it from the Florians, a family on the run from the Danube region. They have with them Elia, who once was part of the local community and now is on the opposite side of the conflict. Overtaken by blind violence and thirst for vengeance, Elia and Osso will confront each other in the Delta fogs, discovering their real nature in a fight that has no heroes.

The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tragedy.

Frank is left with the responsibility for his nephew Bo on an already planned canoe trip. Frank's mate Casper is also coming along. Weighed down a with their obligation, Frank and Casper nevertheless look forward to ending the trip at Skanderborg Festival where there's plenty there for the guys, a spree of drinking and women. Not the best example to set for young Bo. And how do their partners see it all?

J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boy's want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for.

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness.

An aging poet summons his estranged sons to the hotel he is staying at because he feels his death is near; meanwhile, he encounters two women staying at the hotel.

A young woman, her new boyfriend and her single mother embark on a sailing adventure to Bermuda. However, when criminals suddenly attack their boat, the pleasure trip turns into a desperate fight for survival and a quest for vengeance.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Iconoclastic, take-no-prisoners cop John McClane, finds himself for the first time on foreign soil after traveling to Moscow to help his wayward son Jack - unaware that Jack is really a highly-trained CIA operative out to stop a nuclear weapons heist. With the Russian underworld in pursuit, and battling a countdown to war, the two McClanes discover that their opposing methods make them unstoppable heroes.

After a bank job goes badly wrong, three desperate criminals take a young woman and a father and child hostage - it's the beginning of a frantic and violent road trip that not all of them will survive.

Fourteen year old Polish boy Stas Tarkowski and eight year old Nel Rawlison from England are kidnapped as the hostages by Arabic fanatics and taken to their religion leader. Then they manage to escape and try to return to their fathers. Children have a lot of dangerous adventures, meet two Black kids; Kali and Mea, who also help them, make a friendship with an elephant and help one Black's tribe.

An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.

Jake Barnes and his two kids, Sean and Jessie, have moved to Alaska after his wife died. He is a former airline pilot now delivering toilet paper across the mountains. During an emergency delivery in a storm his plane goes down somewhere in the mountains. Annoyed that the authorities aren't doing enough, Jessie and Sean set out on an adventure to find their father with the help of a polar bear which they have saved from a ferocious poacher. Conflict ensues.

A dysfunctional couple head to a remote lakeside cabin under the guise of reconnecting, but each has secret designs to kill the other. Before they can carry out their respective plans, unexpected visitors arrive and the couple is faced with a greater danger than anything they could have plotted.

25-year-old Dwayne McLaren, a former athlete turned auto mechanic, dreams of getting out of tiny Cut Bank, Montana the coldest town in America. But his effort to do so sets in motion a deadly series of events that change his life and the life of the town forever...

After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense, week-long counseling session to work on their relationship.

After Kansas Red rescues young Billy from a card-game shootout, the boy asks Red for help protecting his family from the outlaw Thorn, who’s just kidnapped Billy’s mother, Carol. As Red and Billy ride off to rescue Carol, they run into beautiful, tough-as-nails Leslie, who’s managed to escape Thorn’s men. The three race to stop Thorn’s wedding to Carol with guns a-blazing - but does she want to be rescued?

When rancher and single mother of two Maggie Gilkeson sees her teenage daughter, Lily, kidnapped by Apache rebels, she reluctantly accepts the help of her estranged father, Samuel, in tracking down the kidnappers. Along the way, the two must learn to reconcile the past and work together if they are going to have any hope of getting Lily back before she is taken over the border and forced to become a prostitute.

Ten years after their divorce, Jane and Jake Adler unite for their son's college graduation and unexpectedly end up sleeping together. But Jake is married, and Jane is embarking on a new romance with her architect. Now, she has to sort out her life—just when she thought she had it all figured out.

Attempting to recover from a recent family trauma by escaping into the woods for a peaceful hiking trip, an ex-lawman and his young son stumble across a dangerous contract killer.

The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.

Davy Crockett and his sidekick Georgie compete against boastful Mike Fink ("King of the River") in a boat race to New Orleans. Later, Davy and Georgie, allied with Fink, battle a group of river pirates trying to pass themselves off as Native Americans.

A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, former ranger Gabe Walker and his partner, Hal, are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money.

David Petersen is passing through the Colorado Rockies. After saving a young diner waitress from her violent ex-husband during a break from driving, he hits the road again alone through a dangerous snow blizzard. One false move behind the wheel has him waking up inside a ravine, in the eye of the storm. But the cold is the least of his worries when a beast starts prowling outside. How will he survive?

The sins of the past are not forgotten in this chilling suspense thriller. When the first body was discovered, it seemed a coincidence. But now homicide detective Jack Verdon has cause to worry: the victims of a series of brutal sex murders are all his former girlfriends. Suspected by the FBI agent who’s taken over the case and suspended by his captain, Jack must work outside the law if he’s to find the killer, save his future and protect what’s left of his past.

Adopted as a child, new father Mel Colpin decides he cannot name his son until he knows his birth parents, and determines to make a cross-country quest to find them. Accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and an inept yet gorgeous adoption agent, Tina, he departs on an epic road trip that quickly devolves into a farce of mistaken identities, wrong turns, and overzealous and love-struck ATF agents.

Hoping to bring his family closer together and to recreate his childhood vacation for his own kids, a grown up Rusty Griswold takes his wife and their two sons on a cross-country road trip to the coolest theme park in America, Walley World. Needless to say, things don't go quite as planned.

A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river for a movie shoot, but nobody can provide him any relief.

While holidaying in the French Alps, a Swedish family deals with acts of cowardliness as an avalanche breaks out.

