HOLD THE DARK: Slow Burning Pulp In The Dark Heart Of Alaska

Jeremy Saulnier has a very methodical approach to the way he captures on screen violence. He slowly creates tension from sustained sequences showing his characters preparing for bloody carnage, initially giving the impression of people capable within their fields – only to pull the rug from under our feet and show just how amateur their schemes are when confronted with the chaos of inevitability.

The one thread that unites all four of his efforts to date is a fixation on incompetence amidst life or death situations; whereas he previously mined this for dark laughs (most notably his oft-overlooked 2007 debut Murder Party), it’s now become such a recurrent thematic staple in his work that his fondness for this Coen-esque character trait doesn’t even register as comical whatsoever.

Saulnier goes to conventional territory – but still manages to impress

Hold the Dark doesn’t quite hit the nihilistic highs of Green Room, his prior feature – but it is telling that his film about murderous Neo-Nazis possessed far more levity than the relatively straightforward revenge thriller he’s now made in its wake. Scripted by his regular collaborator Macon Blair, adapted from William Giraldi’s novel of the same name, Hold the Dark is the closest he’s strayed into conventional genre territory while still maintaining his own unique sense of style.

In another filmmaker’s hands, it would have paled in comparison to its obvious influences, or failed due to the lack of depth it adds to familiar rumination on themes including wounded masculinity and fatherhood. And while it is true that Hold the Dark is a step down from his previous work because of this, in Saulnier’s hands, it remains a mightily impressive thriller nonetheless.

Set in the winter of 2004, a period setting only made overt by references to the “Second Battle of Fallujah” on TV news coverage in the background, an author (Jeffrey Wright) has been hired to kill some wolves that have been murdering children in rural Alaska. Hired only as a last resort, the author, Russell Core, takes up the task after meeting a mourning mother (Riley Keough), who believes her six year old son has gone missing as a result of being “taken by wolves” that nobody in the village is willing to hunt.

Russell doesn’t succeed in killing the wolves, but he does find her son’s dead body – leading to the child’s father (Alexander Skarsgard) taking compassionate leave from being stationed in Iraq. To put it mildly, he doesn’t take what he believes was an easily preventable situation very well, unearthing old tensions with the region’s police force (led by James Badge Dale).

If Green Room was like a mosh pit, an intense, claustrophobic adrenaline rush where bone crunching violence could erupt at any moment, then Hold the Dark similarly styles itself in the mould of its surroundings. The result is the polar opposite to his previous effort; a slow-burning effort as sparse as the acres of snowy vistas that clog the screen, the inevitable mayhem postponed due to the sheer isolation of the characters in relation to each other.

It still successfully manages to be tense without relying on a sense of claustrophobia; the most typically Saulnier set-up, Wright’s character noisily falling down a snowy hill towards the wolves he was secretly playing on, could equally be at home in a conventional thriller. There’s no upending of genre expectations, just a tense “against the clock” scenario put in place by the lack of immediate conflict in this extensive setting – and it manages to be every bit as intense as his previous film, despite the lack of geographical confines in place this time around.

Some of Saulnier’s most impressive set pieces to date – alongside his most disappointing

The initial set up also brings to mind The Grey, although Saulnier reassuringly never aspires this first act to be anything more than slow burning pulp, making the comparisons to Joe Carnahan’s surprisingly existential 2012 thriller somewhat moot. There’s also the shadow of the Norwegian thriller Insomnia, remade by Christopher Nolan in 2002, as Wright’s character struggles to adjust to the surreal daylight hours of the state – but these references to well known films aren’t winking nods, so much as brief confessions that Saulnier is fully aware of what films the audience is comparing his to. He puts enough of an individualistic stamp on the revenge thriller that he can casually make you aware of these overt comparisons without losing his commanding directorial voice.

Despite being a slow burn, the first 80-minutes fly by, building up to one of the most impressive set pieces Saulnier has yet staged; a mass shoot out choreographed to show the amateur nature of all those involved. This ten minute sequence is pure adrenaline rush filmmaking, and could conceivably be described as the “Anti-Michael Mann” approach to gunfights – it’s poorly thought out mayhem on the characters’ behalf, lending it an unpredictability even as the overarching fate proves to be inevitable.

The problem is that after effectively building up to this bravura sequence, the third act doesn’t take the baton and increase the stakes further. In fact, the tension so effectively built just peters out, leaving nothing but the oppressive, foreboding atmosphere with nothing substantial in which to invest within it.

It’s a shame that the final half hour proves to be somewhat patience testing, although Saulnier’s use of aesthetics refuses to disappoint alongside it; Magnus Nordenhof Jønck’s cinematography evocatively captures a serene landscape and accentuates the juxtaposition between the natural beauty and the bloody chaos unfolding within it. Equally, the sound design feels immersive enough to make you start shivering along with the whistle of the wind – Netflix may help Saulnier reach a larger audience, but this is very much a film designed for the enrapturing cinema experience.

Hold The Dark: Conclusion

For the most part, Hold the Dark proves that Jeremy Saulnier can lend a violent unpredictability to even the most familiar of thrillers. It’s far from his best work, but it does have some of his most impressively staged set pieces to date, the disappointment of the film’s final stages doing nothing to threaten his status as one of the most assured genre filmmakers working today.

Hold the Dark will stream on Netflix worldwide from Friday, September 28.