Hold the Dark

Now they're saying we should've read the book first. That really ticks me off. A good screenplay should be able to stand on its own, even if from another source. The best part of this movie was the ending, as it ended my suffering. Almost everything in this story, from beginning to end, made no sense at all. And it crawled like a sick slug.

Jeffrey Wright was good, but then he always is.

Let me start by saying that this movie is not completely garbage. It has something to it that keeps you going. For some reason, despite an unintelligible plot and amazingly slow pace, you still find yourself watching the movie waiting for it to redeem itself. It doesn't. The more time you invest in this adventure, the more painful it becomes to admit that this movie is beyond redemption, that nothing normal is going to happen and that you wasted two hours of your life.

I loved Green Room, but this was a very different movie. I don't really know what to make of it, because it is a film that doesn't have much of a plot, has characters that rarely speak, and is quite a slow burn. This is the kind of film that if you half-watch whilst doing something else, you would almost certainly hate it.

So the setup for the film doesn't matter really because within the first 20 minutes it has gone off those rails, but the setup is that a woman's child has been taken by wolves (the third child in the town to have gone missing) and so she writes a letter to a wildlife expert and author to come to Alaska and hunt down the wolves that did it. The film takes so many twists and turns very suddenly and abruptly that by the time it ends you kinda forget that this is how it started. The film is more concerned with tone, atmosphere and theme than it is with character or plot.

As expected the film is pretty damn violent. Not quite Green Room-level, but when it happens you feel it. It also happens very abruptly and suddenly, with little to no hint that anything is about to happen.

Overall the film reminded me of so many other films, but stands on its own as something unlike any of them. It had elements of Wind River, The VVitch, The Grey and Prisoners, but it really is a unique movie. It is somewhere between a 6/10 and a 7/10 for me but it is interesting and unique enough for me to say 7/10 for now. Definitely need to rewatch it.

All the parts are there, good acting, engaging characters, great nature scenes, and a great story that ended up being a little too cryptic. The movie held my attention because I didn't want to miss anything that would confirm what I thought the film would be about. But it never did. My suspicions is that the answers were left on the cutting room floor when the film was edited.

This feels like one of those movies that you have to read the book first to understand what's going on or at least have someone who has read the book sitting next to you to explain what was going on and what all those little details meant.

This was a fantastic film. The acting was solid, stoic, and appropriate for the subject matter. The cinematography was absolutely stunning; leave it to Saulnier to remind us just how red blood really is against the snow.

The story itself was bleak. Bleak doesn't mean boring. On the contrary, this film is a commentary on the darkness in human nature.

Yes the ending is ambiguous, yes it is a slow burn, and yes the subject matter is bleak. I believe these three things only constitute a bad film in the eyes of someone whose idea of perfect cinema is superhero movies.

I cannot state this loudly enough: unfortunately, IMDb reviews no longer reflect the quality of a film. I understand this film is not for everyone; however, the amount of reviews stating "this didn't make sense" is abysmal.