company wouldn't look at us [after a festival screening]. People either embraced it or were very put off by it. It didn't get picked up right away." The film was ultimately purchased for distribution by Island Pictures, which released it in the U.S. on May 8, 1987. Critical reception River's Edge received largely positive reviews from critics. It holds an 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 42 reviews with the consensus: "A harrowing tale of aimless youth, River's Edge generates considerable tension and urgency thanks to strong performances from a stellar cast including Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye." Metacritic gave the film a score of 73 based on 19 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". At the time of its release, several critics considered it a contemporary horror film. Gene Siskel ranked River's Edge the seventh-best film of 1987, while Roger Ebert awarded the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, calling it "the best analytical film about a crime since The Onion Field and In Cold Blood." Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a contemporary horror story about teen-agers, but it contains no slasher scenes or serial homicides. Its monsters are all too real." The New York Timess Janet Maslin called it "bitter and disturbing" and deemed the performances "natural and credible." Vincent Canby, also of The New York Times, named the film "the year's most riveting, most frightening horror film, even if doesn't really belong in the same category with any acknowledged classics of the genre. Metaphysics has nothing to do with River's Edge, though, like Dracula, it's a tale of the undead." David Ansen of Newsweek called the film "the scariest vision of youth since the alarming Brazilian movie Pixote... River's Edge pitches the audience inside this nightmare world of affectless middle-class kids and lets us watch them wallow their way through moral dilemmas they can only half articulate." John Simon of the National Review called River's Edge "splendid". In a 2015 retrospective, Salon deemed River's Edge "the darkest teen film of all time." Film historian Kim Newman named the film "the definitive killer kid movie... Moral without moralizing, blackly comic without tastelessness, [and] acutely tuned in to the way dead-end teens talk." Soundtrack The film's soundtrack, released in 1987 by Enigma Records, features various thrash metal, reggae, and punk tracks. Home media River's Edge was released on VHS in 1987