Score: 4.5 / 5
Jeremy Saulnier's latest feature may not have the same kinetic frenzy as Green Room, but its lofty aesthetic ambitions more than make up for it. Hold the Dark is as enigmatic and abstract as its title suggests and, more than simply not giving us answers, it seems determined to eschew giving us the vocabulary to even ask questions. This is a movie you can watch once (I'm not terribly eager to view it again so soon), but it demands your full attention, or you'll be left out in the cold.
The puzzle box that is Hold the Dark begins with a child playing in the snow when a wolf appears, stalking it. The boy's mother summons nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core to come hunt the wolves blamed for her son's death, along with the deaths of other town children. Core arrives in remote Alaska to begin his search, and quickly realizes he's in far over his head. These people are strange, the landscape is forbidding, and the body count is quickly rising. But this film is no "the dingo ate my baby" Cry in the Dark, nor is it a bleak murder mystery a la Wind River. This is new. This is a journey into the heart of Alaskan darkness, where man and animal meld into a surreal, survivalist impulse and cruelty is the only rule of daily life.
The clues mount quickly, and it's impossible to discuss any without spoiling the central conceit, so if you dislike spoilers, I give you fair warning.
First, we have the name of the town, Keelut, which is fictional; the word comes from an Inuit folktale of a hellhound, a hairless dog-demon who feeds on the dead. Second, we have a wolvish mask that suggests the animalistic brutality of its wearer. Third, we have a cast of characters made mostly of hunters, a pack of humans who use stalking, aggression, sex, and violence as a way of life rather than to achieve any clear results. Fourth, we have stoically intoned legends and accusations of evil that we're never quite sure if we're meant to believe or not. Are these myths real? Are they metaphorical? Are they the product of lives lived on the edge of reality, a step shy of sun-deprived, communal insanity?
Are we confused yet? Let's back up a bit.
Jeffrey Wright plays Cole, world-weary and somewhat bestial after living among a real wild wolf pack and writing about his adventures. He comes to town and lives with Medora, the aggrieved mother, while investigating the situation; when she approaches him naked with the wolf mask and seduces him into choking her, he really should have gotten the hint. Not long later, he discovers the body of her son strangled in the cellar. She disappears into the wilderness; the townsfolk say she is possessed by a demon called tournaq.
Meanwhile, we see her husband Vernon in Iraq, the epitome of a cold-blooded killer. When he returns home to find his son dead and his wife missing, we're pretty sure he's going to lose it. He does indeed, going on a killing spree, burying his son in snow, and hunting his wife. Vern takes up the wolf mask like his wife, his soon-to-die friend encouraging him to let out the wolf inside. It's a little odd that Vern (Alexander Skarsgard) and Medora (Riley Keough) are so pasty-white in this town of natives; it helps suggest, with other things, that there is something Other about them, and perhaps that they are incestuous (she says early that she has no memory in which Vern is not with her).
This film will frustrate you. Its languid visual pacing doesn't comfortably jive with its horrifically brutal violence; its awesome photographic visuals belie unspeakable evil; its convoluted plot and dense themes weave a bewildering web. I had no clear grasp on what was happening until the centerpiece climax, a cinematic masterclass on a massive shootout, the camera sadistically lingering on excess, where we can't look away but can no longer bear the horror. And later, as the film builds toward its inevitable but paradoxically unpredictable conclusion, I found myself slack-jawed in awe more than once. But if you stick with it and watch the characters, holding darkness within, work through what it means to hold off primal, frontier darkness, you'll reach an aesthetic catharsis that requires no standard logic or understanding to appreciate.
Jeremy Saulnier's latest feature may not have the same kinetic frenzy as Green Room, but its lofty aesthetic ambitions more than make up for it. Hold the Dark is as enigmatic and abstract as its title suggests and, more than simply not giving us answers, it seems determined to eschew giving us the vocabulary to even ask questions. This is a movie you can watch once (I'm not terribly eager to view it again so soon), but it demands your full attention, or you'll be left out in the cold.
The puzzle box that is Hold the Dark begins with a child playing in the snow when a wolf appears, stalking it. The boy's mother summons nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core to come hunt the wolves blamed for her son's death, along with the deaths of other town children. Core arrives in remote Alaska to begin his search, and quickly realizes he's in far over his head. These people are strange, the landscape is forbidding, and the body count is quickly rising. But this film is no "the dingo ate my baby" Cry in the Dark, nor is it a bleak murder mystery a la Wind River. This is new. This is a journey into the heart of Alaskan darkness, where man and animal meld into a surreal, survivalist impulse and cruelty is the only rule of daily life.
The clues mount quickly, and it's impossible to discuss any without spoiling the central conceit, so if you dislike spoilers, I give you fair warning.
First, we have the name of the town, Keelut, which is fictional; the word comes from an Inuit folktale of a hellhound, a hairless dog-demon who feeds on the dead. Second, we have a wolvish mask that suggests the animalistic brutality of its wearer. Third, we have a cast of characters made mostly of hunters, a pack of humans who use stalking, aggression, sex, and violence as a way of life rather than to achieve any clear results. Fourth, we have stoically intoned legends and accusations of evil that we're never quite sure if we're meant to believe or not. Are these myths real? Are they metaphorical? Are they the product of lives lived on the edge of reality, a step shy of sun-deprived, communal insanity?
Are we confused yet? Let's back up a bit.
Jeffrey Wright plays Cole, world-weary and somewhat bestial after living among a real wild wolf pack and writing about his adventures. He comes to town and lives with Medora, the aggrieved mother, while investigating the situation; when she approaches him naked with the wolf mask and seduces him into choking her, he really should have gotten the hint. Not long later, he discovers the body of her son strangled in the cellar. She disappears into the wilderness; the townsfolk say she is possessed by a demon called tournaq.
Meanwhile, we see her husband Vernon in Iraq, the epitome of a cold-blooded killer. When he returns home to find his son dead and his wife missing, we're pretty sure he's going to lose it. He does indeed, going on a killing spree, burying his son in snow, and hunting his wife. Vern takes up the wolf mask like his wife, his soon-to-die friend encouraging him to let out the wolf inside. It's a little odd that Vern (Alexander Skarsgard) and Medora (Riley Keough) are so pasty-white in this town of natives; it helps suggest, with other things, that there is something Other about them, and perhaps that they are incestuous (she says early that she has no memory in which Vern is not with her).
This film will frustrate you. Its languid visual pacing doesn't comfortably jive with its horrifically brutal violence; its awesome photographic visuals belie unspeakable evil; its convoluted plot and dense themes weave a bewildering web. I had no clear grasp on what was happening until the centerpiece climax, a cinematic masterclass on a massive shootout, the camera sadistically lingering on excess, where we can't look away but can no longer bear the horror. And later, as the film builds toward its inevitable but paradoxically unpredictable conclusion, I found myself slack-jawed in awe more than once. But if you stick with it and watch the characters, holding darkness within, work through what it means to hold off primal, frontier darkness, you'll reach an aesthetic catharsis that requires no standard logic or understanding to appreciate.
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