Brooding, bloody and unnerving
(out of 4) Starring Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgard. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Opens Friday at TIFF Bell Lightbox and on Netflix. 125 minutes. STC There’s something about the Far North that feels dark and mysterious and, in the hands of director Jeremy Saulnier ( Green Room), it’s the perfect setting for a tale drenched in blood, madness and mysticism.
Jeffrey Wright plays Russell Core, a writer and an expert on wolves who answers an unusual plea from Medora Slone (played by Riley Keough) to come to her remote Alaskan community of Keelut to hunt down the wolf who took her son, Bailey.
The other inhabitants of the village, she tells Core in her letter, refuse to hunt the wolves despite the loss of two other children.
Wright plays the quintessential everyman and outsider with quiet conviction as he embarks on a journey that will spin itself into an increasingly bloody and enigmatic mystery.
He encounters a bison standing placidly on the road as he approaches the village. Yep, the North is an odd and quirky place.
But almost nothing is what is seems as he becomes a witness to a series of strange happenings.
On the other side of the world, U.S. soldier Vernon Slone (Alexander Skarsgard) is adeptly dispatching the enemy in war-torn Iraq, a place of perpetual sunshine, rock and sand that literally seems to be the polar opposite of the dark, snowy and forested northland that is his home.
When Vernon encounters a fellow soldier raping a helpless Iraqi woman, he metes out summary justice. That makes him the good guy, right? Quick assumptions are soon turned on their heads. When Vernon returns home and learns the truth of his son’s death, a bloody rampage ensues, testing the mettle of local law enforcement officer Don- ald Marium (James Badge Dale). That’s enough said about the plot, which has a series of jaw-dropping turns and a surfeit of carnage.
Saulnier has assembled a sterling cast, a large one at that, with not a single weak link in the chain. Skarsgard is exceptionally fine as Vernon, a natural hunter driven by dark and unknowable forces. Dale is awfully good as Marium, a decent lawman struggling to restore order as chaos reigns around him.
There’s some solid supporting work, including Canadians Julian Black Antelope as Cheeon, Vernon’s childhood friend and Tantoo Cardinal as a medicine woman.
Saulnier creates a sense of place that effectively instills a deep sense of foreboding and mystery. The story is well paced and infused with tension and suspense at every turn.
There are some who will decry the film’s unconventional resolution but true cinephiles will appreciate the fact that it doesn’t take the easy way out.
Hold the Dark — coming to Netflix and TIFF Bell Lightbox on the same day — is a bold, mesmerizing and journey into a land of shadows and mystery that will leave a deep and unnerving impression.