Don't Let The Riverbeast Get You! (Movie Review)

SCREENED AS PART OF FANTASTIC FEST 2022

After more than a dozen movies, hundreds of albums, and over 23,000 songs, does Motern Media really need an introduction? Well, yeah, probably for most people, although you might vaguely remember Motern mogul Matt Farley from old episodes of the Reply All podcast or Jimmy Fallon or maybe you stumbled across one of his prom proposal songs on Spotify that are customized with a mind-boggling number of names. It’s also possible you accidentally (yeah, right) found one of his many, many songs about poop and pooping.

While his music career is very much a game of quantity over quality, the movies made by Matt Farley and his filmmaking partner director Charles Roxburgh are firmly in the tradition of Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufman. They firmly follow the axiom that if you can make something quickly and cheaply enough, it’s bound to turn a profit. And if somebody ends up being entertained along the way, all the better. After 20+ years of cranking out incredibly weird regional movies, Fantastic Fest chose to honor Motern Media with the inaugural Golden Spatula award, as well as hosting a retrospective of their work, including the 2012 magnum opus Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You!

Neil Stuart (Matt Farley), the greatest tutor in the history of Rivertown, USA, has returned home three years after the humiliation of being jilted at the altar and mocked by the town because of his belief in the mythical Riverbeast. He finds his former fiancée engaged to the town bully (who, as the movie insists on reminding us at every opportunity, has a son from another marriage), reconnects with his old friends and bandmates, and seeks to restart his tutoring career by helping a local professional athlete’s daughter who was recently kicked out of finishing school because she reported a pervy professor as a peeper. Of course, the Riverbeast is also back, but easily-scared audience members can relax because the movie pulls the William Castle-esque stunt of flashing a red screen anytime it is about to appear, in case anyone needs to avert their eyes.

It turns out the gag of the Riverbeast warning is particularly unnecessarily, not only because the Riverbeast costume is not entirely terrifying or convincing, but because the Riverbeast hardly appears in the first hour of the movie. The vast majority of the movie is a character drama set in a small town where quirky locals spout excessively over-written dialogue in thick New England accents. It’s the main joke of the film, but it’s a damn funny one that plays like a PG-rated version of a Kevin Smith or John Waters movie. There’s something undeniably hilarious at hearing a non-professional actor try to chew on a line like “Your tutoring skills are nonpareil” or “Felipe, why don’t you go to the basement and play your arcade games, I’d like to speak to my godcousin alone.”

Intentionally bad movies can be some of the most dire forms of filmed entertainment. They’re often lazy and hacky and punch down at the idea that somebody with no money and no connection to Hollywood would dare pick up a camera and try to make something. That’s not what Don’t Let The Riverbeast Get You! is. I’d argue that it’s a good movie with a very funny, well-written script that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. There’s a gag featuring a statue and a line about butternut squash that made me laugh as hard as any movie I’ve seen. And more than anything, the movie is charming as hell. I forgot all about the Riverbeast because I was genuinely invested in seeing if Neil’s friend Teddy (Tom Scalzo) would be able to quell his anger issues long enough to convince his pop-locking vagabond girlfriend to ignore her itchy feet and stick around in Rivertown, USA, or to find out if his tutee Allie (Sharon Scalzo) could do well enough on her aptitude test to pursue her newfound dream of becoming a journalist. There’s a real Ted Lasso type of wholesome hangout vibe that made me want to see these likable regional characters work out their problems and, you know, hopefully not let the Riverbeast get them.