HOLD THE DARK (2018) **

Jeremy Saulnier is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors.  Green Room is a flat-out masterpiece, Murder Party is loads of fun, and Blue Ruin is genuinely unnerving.  When I heard his latest was showing up on Netflix, I was eager to check it out.  Unfortunately, this is by far Saulnier’s weakest film.

A pack of wolves have been attacking children and carrying them off into the Alaskan wilderness.  A grieving mother (Riley Keough) hires a wolf expert named Core (Jeffrey Wright) to track down the wolf that killed her son and bring back his remains.  As Core begins his search, the boy’s father (Alexander Skarsgard) returns home from war.  

It’s here where the film takes a big turn and becomes something quite different.  That’s unfortunate because the grim and unrelenting set-up held a lot of promise.  I mean Death Wish with Wolves is a great idea, but Saulnier ditches it about a half hour in.  It especially falls apart once he starts pooling from other genres.  There’s a big shootout in the second act that goes on forever and feels like it belongs in an entirely different film.  Then, near the end it practically turns into a slasher movie.  These twists and turns never fully stick the landing and ultimately feel like a mishmash of ideas without a cohesive center.

It also doesn’t help that the film is so slow moving that it becomes difficult for the viewer to become fully invested in the characters.  Saulnier’s detachment from the material is as cold and remote as the Alaskan wilderness itself.  It certainly looks great though as the shots of the snow-covered landscapes are quite beautiful.

Keough gives far and away the best performance of the movie as the damaged mother seeking revenge.  I usually like Jeffrey Wright, but he is much too subdued here to leave an impression.  He curiously is given very little to do and often feels more like a passive bystander than a true protagonist.  It’s like he’s only there to witness events, and not make an impact on them.  Skarsgard’s one-dimensional, mostly silent performance likewise fails to register.

After this and Mute, Skarsgard is quickly becoming the poster boy for overlong, disappointing Netflix movies from otherwise gifted filmmakers.  Guys like Duncan Jones and Jeremy Saulnier are long on talent and make movies that are uniquely theirs.  Unfortunately, it seems like there is no one at Netflix who’s willing to reign them.  That’s great news for the creativity of the filmmaker, but it’s not necessarily a picnic for the audience.