hold the dark
Stainless Steel Ruger Mini-14 GB-F ("Government Barrel, Folding Stock") - 5.56x45mm The rifle can be seen in the background. With Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough. At the start of another pitiless winter, wolves have taken three children from the remote Alaskan village of Keelut, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Watching Hold the Dark isn’t quite as interesting as ruminating on it afterwards, which is probably both a critique and a compliment. After the deaths of three children suspected to be killed by wolves, writer Russell Core is hired by the mother of a missing six-year-old boy to track down and locate her son in the Alaskan wilderness. Hold The Dark is an astounding work of literary fiction which could be described as thriller but I prefer to think of as an examination of the darkness we are capable of. READING GRID This angle of the analysis of the film and this acceptance of the functioning of the mechanics that animates Vernon Slone, allow us to solve the puzzle proposed by Saulnier. Jeffrey Wright stars as Russell Core, the film's titular character. It explores good versus evil, nature versus nurture and is a thorough examination of the beast within. It forces us to confront a menacing otherness that lies beyond the typical order of things. Hold the Dark kicks off when Alaska housewife Medora Sloane sends a handwritten letter to naturalist and wolf expert Russell Core after she believes her son has been taken by wolves. Hold the Dark is a surreal mystery about a fictional remote Alaskan village, Keelut, beset by wolves that are apparently taking children. “Hold the Dark” is an unnerving and intimate portrayal of nature gone awry. However, whereas Green Room was about the young accepting unavoidable mortality, there's something grander here. Like all of Saulnier's films, Hold The Dark is a brutal, unflinching look at life and death with tangible stakes. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Written with “force and precision and grace” (John Wilwol, New York Times Book Review) Hold the Dark is a “taut and unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness” (Dennis Lehane). Hold the Dark being an allegory, is visible only in the rough contours of an elaborate discourse. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier, Netflix's Hold the Dark is a mystery that borders on horror. Cheeon also holds a Mini-14 in one scene, and another Mini-14 can be seen used by a policeman during the shootout. A werewolf movie that isn’t a werewolf movie, but really kind of is, Hold the Dark avoids easy categorization, sometimes to a fault. The new film from filmmaker Jeremy Sauliner (Blue Ruin, Green Room) has no color in its title–it could have been called The Grey, but there’s already been a (better) wolf-related film with that name. Hold the Dark is many things; sensical is not one of them.