‘Hold the Dark’: Jeremy Saulnier Crafts A Moody, Post-Peckinpah Thriller [TIFF Review]

“Three days ago my son Bailey was taken by wolves,” she writes in the letter, and she harbors no illusions about what happened next: “I don’t expect you to find my son alive. But you could find the wolf that took him.” When Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) arrives at her door, Medora (Riley Keough) holds up the back of the book and compares the author photo. “You’re old,” she notes and lets him in. They talk over what he’ll do, and she fetches him a better pair of boots. They have a somewhat inexplicable moment of physical intimacy. The next morning, as he heads out, a neighbor advises him, “Go back the way you came.’ Can’t say he wasn’t warned.

READ MORE: Toronto International Film Festival: 22 Most Anticipated Movies

The early passages of Jeremy Saulnier’s “Hold the Dark” seem fairly straightforward, the set-up for a good old-fashioned wilderness adventure: Mr. Core will brave the elements, place his own life in danger for the sake of his mission, have his fair share of near-death experiences, and finally, triumphantly, take down his prey.

READ MORE: 55 Must-See Films: The 2018 Fall Movie Preview

Aside from a single, taut, tip-top wilderness scene early on – in which Core howls like a wild man and nearly loses his gun as the wolves approach – that is not the movie that follows. Instead, screenwriter Macon Blair (frequent star of Saulnier’s films, and writer/director of his own “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore”), adapting William Giraldi’s novel, splits his focus between Core and the boy’s father, Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård). It becomes the story of two hunters; Vernon, you see, is a military sharpshooter, just back from overseas with an injury that doesn’t seem to have affected his aim.

READ MORE:  ‘Hold The Dark’ Trailer: ‘Green Room’s’ Jeremy Saulnier Takes You To Frigid Alaska To Track Killer Wolves

And then… well, it’s hard to know how much to say. Blair’s “Hold The Dark” script keeps jolting the narrative with joy-buzzer plot turns, and just when you’ve managed to reacquaint yourself with what’s happening, they’ll throw in another one. Suffice it to say that the body count is quite high, much of it due to a blisteringly intense cops-and-crook shootout in the snow — a rare firefight where every gunshot makes an impact, and every death has weight. It’s a harrowing sequence, but the most effective moment is a human one, near its conclusion, when genuine fury arrives in Wright’s eyes. Wright’s done a lot of good TV work lately, but it’s a pleasure to see him wrap his arms around a film role of this size; even when the narrative wobbles, he commands it with authority. (Skarsgård also gets a couple of memorable moments, in which his steely-faced façade is allowed to crumble, if only for a second.)

Saulnier doesn’t build the kind of fierce momentum he achieved in his earlier (and, to be honest, better) films “Green Room” and “Blue Ruin,” but that also doesn’t seem to be his aim. He tunes in immediately to a particular key — quiet, still, with the dialogue barely louder than a whisper — and is as interested in little details (the way the winds both whisper and howl in the background, for example, or the slight pause he takes before the final confrontation to behold the majesty of these mountains) as he is in his foregrounds.

He unfortunately never quite manages to hold the picture’s disparate elements together. “Hold the Dark” is just too scattered, and a bit too taken with its own dourness (and darkness — it’s yet another recent indie where it’s often hard just to make out people’s faces), particularly since Saulnier loses the nerve to go altogether nihilist in the final stretch. But at its best, it’s a moody, scary, post-Peckinpah meditation on masculinity — and an all too rare opportunity to see Mr. Wright fronting a feature. [B-]

“Hold The Dark” launches on Netflix and in select theaters on September 28.

Check out all our coverage from the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival here.