Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hold the Dark’ on Netflix, Creepy Wolf Nonsense with Lots of Blood

Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier has been a darling among genre fans and filmmakers, having made one revenge flick (Blue Ruin) and one metal-band-escapes-from-Neo-Nazi-stronghold movie (Green Room) which felt fresh, daring, and consistently surprising. Now he’s taking on the vague sub-genre of great northern murder and mysticism with the thriller Hold the Dark.

HOLD THE DARK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jeffrey Wright plays Russell Core, a famed wolf-tracker and author who is contacted by Medora (Riley Keough), a young mother living at the edge of the Alaskan wilderness. Her young son was carried away by wolves and likely killed, and she needs Core to go hunt and kill the wolf that did it before her husband, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) returns from duty in the Middle East. Wright agrees, though somewhat reluctantly, and he becomes even more reluctant when he finds out Medora has been less than truthful and that Vernon, upon his return, turns out to be a far darker, more dangerous person than he’d bargained for.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Saulnier’s previous movies make themselves known in fits and stars. A mid-movie shootout has definite Green Room vibes, and a Macon Blair cameo will obviously bring Blue Ruin back to your mind. But what Hold the Dark really reminded me of are those countless horror films and thrillers that both romanticize the snowy north and turn it into this kind of pseudo-mystical hinterland. Movies like Ravenous or Wendigo or The Last Winter. And while, in the past, Saulnier has been able to take what’s familiar about these genres — in this case, anthropomorphizing animals for creepy mystical effect; borrowing from the spiritual tradition of native tribes of the areas for a vaguely creepy supernatural effect — and turn them into something fresh, Hold the Dark struggles to do anything more than vague wolf nonsense that we’ve all seen before.

Performance Worth Watching: The cast is very strong from top to bottom. Riley Keough is one of the more exciting young actresses working today, though she doesn’t get a whole lot to do past the first 15 minutes. James Badge Dale is a strong presence as the local cop, and Alexander Skarsgard is effectively sinister as a man who turns out to be little more than a killing machine. But it’s Jeffrey Wright’s quiet intensity — and his willingness to let his character’s fear shine through — that guides the whole film.

Memorable Dialogue: “The natural order doesn’t warrant revenge,” Cole tells Medora, expressing his ambivalence about heading into the woods to kill a wolf for killing her child. Medora, bereft of a comeback for that, simply rejects Cole’s talk of nature and reminds him she’s a person. “What happened here,” she says, “happened to me.”

Single Best Shot: It’s less a single shot than it is an entire sequence, but there’s a set piece in the middle of the movie that is a massive shootout between the overmatched police and a witness to a crime who’s been stockpiling weapons out in his barn. It’s a scene that nails down the lawlessness of the wilderness up there, though it’s also there because Jeremy Saulnier never met a massacre he didn’t like to film in gory detail.

Necessary or not, it’s a breathtakingly filmed scene, kicking off with a shot over Dale’s shoulder where a barn window opens unbeknownst to most of the characters, followed by machine gun fire filling the screen. It’s terrifying and tense and the whole thing goes on forever.

Sex and Skin: Yep! In an early scene, Medora steps out of a bath, naked, dons a truly creepy wolf mask, and then slips into bed with Cole. It’s not sexy, it’s almost threatening, actually.

Our Take: It’s a tale of two movies, in many ways. The creepy mystical wolf stuff, everything about Medora and Vernon (they’re a secret between them that seems incredibly obvious that the film just declines to address), the fact that Vernon essentially becomes Michael Myers for the second half of the film, all of that seems rather weak. That said, there are scenes of incredible tension here, and truly, that mid-film shootout is an all-timer, or it would be if it were in a better movie.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but feel free to bail if it starts to try your patience.

Stream Hold the Dark on Netflix