[Once
again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for
the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The
Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the
help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can
pull it off this year.]
The Netflix original feature HOLD THE DARK has a lot going for it. It creates a great sense of
place with its rural Alaska setting. That in turn contributes to a tone of
cold, quiet desolation. The WICKER MAN-esque
trappings of strange pagan wolf-based beliefs are suitably unnerving. Jeremy
Saulnier’s grindhouse meets arthouse style is just as potent as it was in BLUE RUIN and GREEN ROOM. And the cast boasts such reliable solid players as
Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, and Riley Keough. Unfortunately there are
issues either inherent in the source novel by William Giraldi or in its
adaptation for the screen by Macon Blair that make HOLD THE DARK a frustrating experience.
Wright plays wolf expert Russell Core. He’s been called in
to kill a pack of wolves responsible for the deaths of 3 children by Medora
(Keough), the mother of the most recent victim. As it turns out things aren’t
entirely as they seem, though. Medora likes walking around wearing nothing but
a wooden wolf mask and trying to get strange wolf experts to strangle her. It
also turns out that she’s the one responsible for the death of her son, which
Core discovers after she has gone on the lam.
