I tend to watch films from a wide range of quality during the Shocktober month, but when I learned that Hold the Dark was getting released on Netflix, I had to catch it out. The third film from Jeremy Saulnier (who made the amazing indy revenge film Blue Ruin and the super intense grimy Green Room) isn't exactly horror, but definitely one of the bleakest and most suspenseful dramas that I've seen.
I went in with the basic plot summary that seemed like a combination of Wind River and The Grey; a hunter is brought in to rescue a missing child who has been killed by wolves. I really can't describe the twists and turns this story goes into, but I'll run through the main players:
We have an Alaskan mom played with a haunted emptiness by Riley Keough (pretty great in American Honey) who hires a wildlife writer (Jeffrey Wright at his most vulnerable and haggard) to kill the wolf. Things pretty much go off the rails from thers with Wright’s past his prime reluctant hunter out of his depth in a mess of local superstitions, Keough’s damaged soul looking for all kinds of awful ways to escape, James Badge Dale as the local sheriff trying to sort through the chaos, and Alexander Skarsgård’s psychopathic war vet stalking everybody else through the snow (doing his best combination of Dan Stevens from the Guest and a famous John Carpenter antagonist)
I thought for a long time of a "well its this kind of movie" to attempt to give a one sentence summary and the best thing I could come up with was a film blessed vintage John Carpenter direction and written by the Coen Brothers in serious "No Country For Old Men" mode.
The tone veers wildly and wonderfully from psychological horror to grindhouse thriller and art-house drama. There are some slow, quiet, long stretches with quiet dialogue that then pivots 180 degrees to tough, bleak and nasty acts of violence. Its a hard movie to recommend because I can see action fans being bored with the more abstract vignettes (the movie at times almost seems like a short HBO miniseries) while more sensitive souls will find the unsettling punches of brutality off putting (there is a terrific action scene about half way through that drives the latter sections). I'll say that you have seen Saulnier’s other films, he isn’t exactly afraid to get dirty and visceral with the tone and gore.
With that disclaimer, this isn't a grindhouse thriller in production value, in fact the movie is extremely pretty to look at. I typically don't comment on camera and shot design, but this was shot by Danish cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck who treats the snowy Alaskan wilderness (the film was shot near Canada doubling for the Arctic) like a western, giving Saulnier an open canvas to work on after the claustrophobia of Green Room. Still, the real meat of the film is pushed back into the small, dark spaces; bedrooms, cars, and a very creepy cave and brings menace and a sense of dread in the more sense moments.
Keough and Skarsgård work perfectly in opposition to each other, given the ongoing theme of wolves, they are the hunter and prey in an odd way. If you loved him in his more emotional moments in Westworld Wright carries the weight of the film. Instead of a macho hunter/hero, he is anything but. Playing the lead with a combination of melancholy, damaged and physically sick at times, he is driven by the same kind of nihilistic sense of duty that hangs heavily over everyone in the film.
To try and wrap things up, Hold the Dark is far from a feel good time and values tone and mood over plot. It’s admittedly uneven, messy and I'd go as far as to call bloated (it runs at two hours five minutes and spends a lot time with the ensemble) Saulnier with a script by Macon Blair (who does appear in a small role late in the film) weaves through several different genres, swerving the script away from all safe places and conventions. I really wish more films took risks like this one, that were contemplative, existential, and definitely stuck with you. I'd give it a 9/10, definitely the best Netflix original film, and although it isn't the sort of movie to get Academy Award buzz, hope that someone mentions Wright's performance and the cinematography at year's end.
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