**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Green Room by director Jeremy Saulnier is a visceral horror thriller that leaves a lasting impression. His latest film, the Netflix exclusive Hold the Dark, isn’t quite as great as Green Room but not many movies are. Dark slow rolls its menace, probably a bit too much as there is a lot of pausing and shots that linger.  It straddles a very fine line between the horror that humans do or possibly influenced by the supernatural. Also when the violence occurs, it lands as horrific and final and few characters barely squeak out alive.

Wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffery Wright) is invited to Alaska by a grieving mother, Medora (Riley Keough) who says the local wolves snatched away her boy. Her husband, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) has returned from the Iraq war overseas to find out his child is dead and his mother is missing. Core and police Chief Donald (James Badge Dale) uncover a web of lies and murder that surround the parents. Even worse, Vernon and his buddy Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope) are on a killing spree to get revenge on everyone who let his boy die.

At first glance, the movie seems to be man versus nature or, even if slightly more derivatively, man versus wolves which was done rather excellently in The Grey. But this movie has more on its mind that folks being unlucky in the wild. There’s a seeping, invasive bloodlust that seems to overcome folks. The police Chief derisively snorts that the locals say the mother was overcome with a wolf demon spirit. But the fact that the mom is wandering around in a wolf mask and then her husband takes up a wooden wolf mask and engages in murder makes it seem there might be some truth to that tale. The movie never makes it explicit possession, like the characters don’t confront a CGI ghost or whatever, but the possibility of a spirit causing this is hovering in the background. Or it’s just the evil humans do for no logical reason.

Wright conveys emotion in smaller snippets. It’s not very loud, showy stuff but it is effective. Wright’s Core spends a bunch of the movie confused, wandering and sometimes a little sick which is remarkably similar to what he did as Bernard in the most recent season of Westworld. One of the best scenes is when Core stumbles across a pack of wolves devouring one of their own and he calls unwanted attention to himself. Core has a subplot about wanting to reconnect with his daughter who lives in Alaska which gives him some heart but seems really unnecessary in an already long movie.

Skarsgard makes for an intimidating figure when he isn’t saying anything, like when he confronts an old woman in the village who says that death is the way of life or even a darkly comedic scene where someone patches him up after taking a gunshot to the back.  Keough as the wife plays her character really off-centre, even when she seems to be simply grieving for her kid there is something strange about her especially when Core sees her wandering at night. She gets crazier as it goes on and Keough is very effective at being freaky. Antelope as Cheeon is downright chilling with his dark outlook and he has a fantastic conversation with the police chief about how nobody cares about his village. As the police chief, Dale has the standard world weariness about him and they even give him a pregnant wife for extra sympathy points. Yet for a thinly written character, Dale gives him soul.

Explosions of violence that break the chilly silence are really memorable. In probably one of the most harrowing scenes in a movie all year, a character with a machine gun unloads on an unsuspecting group of targets. It’s completely brutal as even wearing body armor is utterly useless. It’s a great scene that continually ups the stakes as things go progressively from bad to worse as people are caught in a meat grinder of bullets. Another intense bit is Vernon doing his daily work in the Iraq war as he coldly executes a few people without being very perturbed by it. He saves a random Iraqi woman being victimized which seems to show he has a strange moral code but that is entirely upended when he ends up back at home and random killings start. It’s nebulous if he is out for revenge or possessed by a wolf demon spirit or he just completely lost his mind. The movie never explains it which makes the whole thing creepier. The ending involving where all of these crazy killer people end up is nicely bleak and thematically appropriate. The cinematography by Magnus Nordenhof Jonck has a chilly eeriness that is always compelling to look at.

Hold the Dark is a gripping movie even if it takes it’s time. Probably a bit too much, frankly. But it has slow drip erosion of sanity and the inevitability of death for these people trapped in an icy, uncaring world. This is not a fun movie but it is a very good one.