Movie Review: Hold the Dark

Hold the Dark **** / *****

Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier.

Written by: Macon Blair based on the book by William Giraldi.

Starring: Jeffrey Wright (Russell Core), Alexander Skarsgård (Vernon Sloane), Riley Keough (Medora Slone), James Badge Dale (Donald Marium), Macon Blair (Shan), Julian Black Antelope (Cheeon), Beckam Crawford (Bailey).

 

Jeremy Saulnier’s last two films – Blue Ruin and Green Room – are about normal people who are forced into violent situations, get in over their heads, and then have to fight back in a way they didn’t think they were capable of. The same could be said about his latest film, Hold the Dark, as well – and yet, this doesn’t feel like Saulnier is going over the same ground once again. Hold the Dark is more ambitious and ambiguous – and, true, less satisfying – than his previous two films, mainly because Saulnier refuses to give the audience the payoff they expect. Hell, he hardly even gives them the setup. This a slower moving, more internal film, where ultimately, not everything can be explained. Some crimes – some people – are like that.

 

The film takes place almost entirely in Alaska – in a small town up North (when one character says they have a daughter in Anchorage, the person they’re talking to sneers “That city ain’t Alaska” – and you know what they mean). This town has had a wolf problem recently – with three local children being taken off into the woods by the animals. The mother of the most recent victim, Medora Slone (Riley Keough), writes a letter to Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), an expert on wolves to get him to come and see if he can track the animals that took her boy. She knows her son is dead, but wants this taken care of before her husband, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard), returns from the war overseas. Core agrees, but quickly realizes he has no idea what he has agreed to – no idea what is going on in this town. Meanwhile, Medora has run off, and Vernon – after we witness him kill a lot people in the war – shows back up, to kill a lot of people in Alaska, as he tries to track down his wife. Core, and the Sheriff (James Badge Dale) are on the trail of them both.

 

Hold the Dark is an odd film, as it is all about its dark tone in which nothing in this town feels quite right. Yes, three children have gone missing – probably killed by wolves, but there is something about this town, how they look at Core, how they interact with each other which suggests there is something even darker at play here. This is the type of film where you’re never quite sure what to expect next – whether something otherworldly is going to happen, or something just deep down human is wrong here.

 

Core is an odd choice as a protagonist, because he’s more of an observer than anything – our conduit into this world that is clearly deeply messed up, but someone the people inside of it don’t seem to realize that. Wright is a terrific actor – and this is one of his best performances – it is an interior performance, one about pain and torment and confusion. He doesn’t really drive the story forward in any way though – and neither, really does Medora, who is gone after she sets everything in motion. The driving force is Vernon, but he’s probably the most unknowable of all of the characters. He certainly speaks the least – especially after he goes off on his own.

 

The movie occasionally burst into brutal violence – nowhere more so than at about the half way point, where there is a sustained gun battle between the police, and one man with a high powered rifle, that keeps going and going and going, from one brutal, bloody minute to the next. That scene may just act as the entire film as a microcosm – as Core watches in horror, unable to really do anything, and not even to be able to explain what’s happening in why. He’ll eventually break and just yell “Stop:” – probably because there is nothing else he could say.

 

Hold the Dark isn’t as viscerally satisfying as Blue Ruin or Green Room. It isn’t as satisfying on a dramatic level either, really, because the characters in those earlier films were easy to understand and relate to – even the bad guys, you knew why they were who they were. Here, everything is a mystery. Perhaps it’s a little too much, and perhaps the film is a little too long at just over two hours. But it’s a deeper, dark, ambitious and ambiguous film – perhaps one that will grow on multiple viewings. It is proof that Saulnier is a great filmmaker – the film is visually stunning from beginning to end. It may not be quite up to the standards of those other two films, but it perhaps shows a slightly different direction in which he’s heading.