Hold The Dark (2018) ***1/2

With Hold The Dark (2018) Jeremy Saulnier continues the successful string of films he started with Blue Ruin (2013) and Green Room (2015). As with his other films, HTD is another violent tale of vengeance and survival but the tone this time around is moodier and bleaker than ever, owing much to director Sam Peckinpah. Saulnier's constant collaborator (as actor) Macon Blair penned the screenplay (and has a small role) in this story of a wolf expert (Jeffrey Wright) called to Alaska by a mother (Riley Keough) to track down the wolves who took her son. Her husband, played by Alexander Skarsgård (in his second Netflix film of the year), returns from the Iraq War and he's all kinds of disturbed. Fun connection: Alexander's father Stellan starred in the excellent 1997 Norwegian crime thriller Insomnia which Christopher Nolan repurposed to Alaska for his 2002 version (review).

Without spoiling anything, when a key plot point happens early on in HTD, the film goes in a whole other direction than what I expected. Yet nothing in HTD is revelatory—it's a definite slow burner that doesn't call attention to itself, save one explosive and tense gun fight. It's a film that raises a lot of questions but offers almost no answers (despite a scene where Wright says to another main character that they are there). While the character development is a bit slight and the run time feels a hair long, the film as a whole is very satisfying—great performances, strong cinematography, and an eerie, atmospheric score by the other two Blair brothers, Brooke and Will, who've composed all of Saulnier's work.