Film Review: Hold The Dark

With Murder Party, Blue Ruin, and Green Room, Jeremy Saulnier has already cemented himself as one of the best filmmakers out there, especially when it comes to delivering some delightfully nasty genre cinema. His latest film, Hold The Dark, is a somewhat slight departure from his usual approach. This is not only the first time that he’s tackling someone else’s material, in this case the book of the same name by William Giraldi, but it’s also the first time he isn’t writing the film itself, that goes to his frequent collaborator, Macon Blair, who also has a small role.

The film is about a writer, and former naturalist, Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), who gets called in by Medora Sloane (Riley Keough) to hunt the wolf that took her young son before her husband, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård), comes back from his tour in Iraq. He obliges, and goes out to a small village in the Alaskan wilderness, where things aren’t entirely what they seem.

I’m keeping things vague, not necessarily because the film is full of crazy twists and turns, though it is the kind of film to keep you on your toes, but because the plotting of it isn’t what draws you in. I mentioned that it’s only a somewhat slight departure from Saulnier’s previous approach. It actually falls in line thematically with his films relatively well. Saulnier has a way of expressing and exploring violence, and what it does to you physically and mentally. Here, the scope of the story expands, and so does his exploration of violence, and also, more specifically, the motivations behind it, which brings to mind something you’d see in the works of Cormac McCarthy.

There’s a nihilistic edge that he brings to his film, and this is where it hits the hardest. This film is all about how some people will operate in a certain way that might be beyond your understanding. That unknowable, incomprehensible part of the brain that would allow someone to commit really horrific acts – that is where the antagonist of this film operates. You might get moments where Russell tries to find some semblance of understanding of why things are happening in the way that they are, but he ultimately comes short. Sometimes bad people do bad things, and it’s best that you get out of their way rather than try to stop and understand.

Because of this, I can totally understand some audience members leaving the film rather frustrated and disappointed. This is not the kind of film interested in giving you answers. It’s not the kind of film that offers catharsis. It’s not the kind of film that gives its character a heroic demise. It’s the kind of film that throws you in the face of evil, and proceeds to kick you in the stomach until it gets bored and leaves. It’s incredibly bleak, and while it lacks the tightness of something like Blue Ruin and Green Room, it uses every second to drown you in its doom and gloom atmosphere.

It’s also beautifully made. Saulnier hasn’t made a film of this scope before, but he takes his ability to use space and blocking characters for maximum tension, and blows it up over the snowy environment. Cinematographer, Magnus Nordenhof Jønck, has a way of capturing the vistas in a way that evokes beauty and a sinister undercurrent. Editor, Julia Bloch, who also worked on Blue Ruin and Green Room, does a wonderful job at keeping things moving very patiently, while also knowing how to prevent the film from dragging. She gives the film a pulse that allows you to be consistently engrossed, despite the fact it’s designed to not deliver what almost any other movie would. It’s subtle, but it works wonders, and the same claim can be applied to the wonderfully eerie score by Will and Brooke Blair.

The performances are uniformly terrific. Wright has always been one of the most reliable character actors out there, and his soft-spoken quality provides for a solid emotional grounding for the audience to latch onto in the midst of all the violence and bleakness. Skarsgård also does the impossible by always remaining as an engaging presence, even though his character is mysterious and emotionally distant. There’s even some stellar, if minor, turns from folks like James Badge Dale, Tantoo Cardinal, and Julian Black Antelope.

While it may end up testing many folks’ patience, Hold The Dark was totally my jam. It’s precisely the kind of somber, nasty, and muscular slow burn that I get a huge kick out of. It even has this quality that I really love, but rarely see in movies – and I don’t know if there’s a proper term for it – where it seems like the film is consistently on the verge of taking a supernatural or paranormal turn, but it never does. It just oozes malevolence in every frame. Plus, there’s an all-timer shootout that happens smack dab in the middle of this thing, and it makes me wish this was given a wide theatrical release. Either way, the film is a bleak dive into unknowable evil, and despite it’s very methodical approach, I found it profoundly engrossing. Given how much the film expands his range as a filmmaker, it makes me even more excited to see where Jeremy Saulnier (and Macon Blair too, if I’m being honest) goes from here.