Review: Hold the Dark
Somewhere in a small Alaskan village named Keelut, there lives a young woman by the name of Medora Slone (Riley Keough). She has been left alone on this cold land of howling winds by a husband who's away at war, and she has been further left alone by the disappearance of her son, who has been taken and, most likely, killed by a pack of wolves. Hers is not the first child to fall victim to these creatures - in fact, he is the third - and Medora wants some sort of justice, to be able to present the dead body of the wolf responsible to her husband when he returns home.
To that end, she reaches out to Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), a wolf expert who predominantly accepts her invitation because it would allow him to perhaps visit his daughter who lives in Anchorage. When he arrives, Medora already appears to have succumbed to some sort of blackness within, lamenting how her husband left her with a sick child and later, in a tremendously unsettling and eerie scene, sleepwalking in the nude, getting into bed with Russell, placing his hand around her throat, and starting to strangle herself. When her boy's body is finally found, it is Medora who then disappears, inciting a manhunt spearheaded by her husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård), who is back in town after suffering an injury during his Iraqi tour of duty.
Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, who has been establishing himself as a fine craftsman particularly skilled in shocking savagery and crawl-under-the-skin menace in films such as Blue Ruin and Green Room, once again plumbs into the heart of darkness, combining elements of folklore, fairy tale, survival drama, and psychological thriller with remarkable finesse. Saulnier and cinematographer Magnus Nordenhor Jonck take full advantage of the landscape, presenting it as minefield rife with threats, both external and internal. In fact, it's the gnawing sense that the demons within are far deadlier than those without that may be the most terrifying element of Hold the Dark.
As bleak and unforgiving as the narrative may be, Saulnier finds space to stage a fantastic shootout between Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope), a Native friend of Vernon's with whom he goes violently awry, and the local law enforcement, which is headed by sheriff Donald Marium (James Badge Dale). In many ways, Hold the Dark is thematically of a piece with last year's underrated Wind River; both use a mystery to shed light on human condition, both feature characters doing their best to survive in harsh environments, both also note the underlying racial tensions between whites and Natives, and both understand that there are things that are often beyond human comprehension.
Hold the Dark
Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
Written by: Macon Blair; based on the novel by William Giraldi
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Bloor, James Badge Dale, Macon Blair, Julian Black Antelope
