This review is probably gonna get downvoted to hell but I rather liked this movie. Was I frustrated at parts during my first watch? Yes. Did I have to look up what the movie was about? Yes. But did I, overall, enjoy the movie? Yes. I enjoyed it quite a bit once I threw out my preconceived notions of what I thought this film would be.
Hold the Dark is the third film directed by Jeremy Saulnier. It stars the always fantastic Jeffrey Wright as Russell Core, a wolf expert and author who receives a letter from a grieving mother who asks him to come hunt the wolves who took her son. This takes him to northern Alaska where he, as well as the audience, soon find that things are not as they seem.
This is where the movie shifts from being another well directed mostly conventional thriller film from Saulnier to something more metaphoric and packed with heavy-handed symbolism. If you're familiar with the director's previous work and went into this movie expecting more of the same this can feel a bit like you're being put through the wringer. You expect the movie to explain itself to you but then it simply ends.
Like Saulnier's other films it is incredibly hyperviolent. And the more I think about it, the more sense This movie is a dark look into the human id, what connects us to animals. Alexander Skarsgaard's character is taken over by his animal side, the dark, while Jeffrey Wright's character resists it and retains his humanity through to the end of the film. The dialogue is well written and the direction is stellar. This is a film that is packed to the brim with incredible moments, albeit mostly towards the latter half.
There's just some directors who people permit to have an artistic lisence and some that don't. David Lynch and David Cronenberg are directors who are allowed to experiment and toy with conventional story telling and people will eat up anything they put out without a second thought. But when a director who doesn't have the same artistic licence attempts something in a similar vein, it will be decried for the same reasons that people heap praise on those two directors for. Often by the same people it seems. I can better explain this movie than I can explain Mulhalland Drive. Does that make this a superior movie? Not necessarily, as these types of movies are truely in the eye of the beholder. It's a lot harder to quantify what makes these types of movies good. If you liked it you liked it, if you hated it you hated it.
To summarize, I really did enjoy this movie, despite some flaws. Sure, people say that if you have to look up what a movie is about then it must not have been a very good movie. Yeah, I'm sure these people fully understood movies like Donnie Darko and Eraserhead on their first watch too. I really wanted to give this movie an 8 or a 9 but I had to knock it down to a 7 as this movie does have issues and there are a couple of scenes, especially towards the beginning, that I wish had been trimmed down. It's one of those movies that's hard to recommend though, as it's hard to pin down who the audience for this will be. But, I think Jeffrey Wright got as close as anybody will in an interview he did with Newsweek:
"If you like to be freaked out and taken on an epic journey it's a nice home for you."
Hold the Dark is the third film directed by Jeremy Saulnier. It stars the always fantastic Jeffrey Wright as Russell Core, a wolf expert and author who receives a letter from a grieving mother who asks him to come hunt the wolves who took her son. This takes him to northern Alaska where he, as well as the audience, soon find that things are not as they seem.
This is where the movie shifts from being another well directed mostly conventional thriller film from Saulnier to something more metaphoric and packed with heavy-handed symbolism. If you're familiar with the director's previous work and went into this movie expecting more of the same this can feel a bit like you're being put through the wringer. You expect the movie to explain itself to you but then it simply ends.
Like Saulnier's other films it is incredibly hyperviolent. And the more I think about it, the more sense This movie is a dark look into the human id, what connects us to animals. Alexander Skarsgaard's character is taken over by his animal side, the dark, while Jeffrey Wright's character resists it and retains his humanity through to the end of the film. The dialogue is well written and the direction is stellar. This is a film that is packed to the brim with incredible moments, albeit mostly towards the latter half.
There's just some directors who people permit to have an artistic lisence and some that don't. David Lynch and David Cronenberg are directors who are allowed to experiment and toy with conventional story telling and people will eat up anything they put out without a second thought. But when a director who doesn't have the same artistic licence attempts something in a similar vein, it will be decried for the same reasons that people heap praise on those two directors for. Often by the same people it seems. I can better explain this movie than I can explain Mulhalland Drive. Does that make this a superior movie? Not necessarily, as these types of movies are truely in the eye of the beholder. It's a lot harder to quantify what makes these types of movies good. If you liked it you liked it, if you hated it you hated it.
To summarize, I really did enjoy this movie, despite some flaws. Sure, people say that if you have to look up what a movie is about then it must not have been a very good movie. Yeah, I'm sure these people fully understood movies like Donnie Darko and Eraserhead on their first watch too. I really wanted to give this movie an 8 or a 9 but I had to knock it down to a 7 as this movie does have issues and there are a couple of scenes, especially towards the beginning, that I wish had been trimmed down. It's one of those movies that's hard to recommend though, as it's hard to pin down who the audience for this will be. But, I think Jeffrey Wright got as close as anybody will in an interview he did with Newsweek:
"If you like to be freaked out and taken on an epic journey it's a nice home for you."
Tell Your Friends