Jeremy Saulnier’s films are full of brutal, explosive violence. The fantastic Blue Ruin found Macon Blair on a ruthless revenge mission, the tense Green Room saw a punk rock band battling White Supremacists, and now his next film takes has Jeffrey Wright tracking a pack of child-killing wolves, as well as a pissed-off Alexander Skarsgard.

Hold the Dark comes from a script by Blair, who also has has a role in the film. Set in northern Alaska, Wright plays a wolf expert who sets out to find the animals who killed a woman’s (Riley Keough) young son. Things escalate from there once her husband (Skarsgard) returns home from war and things seem to take an odd turn towards something cultish. Based on the trailer, it looks like Hold the Dark may not be what we think. Here’s the official synopsis:

Retired naturalist and wolf expert Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) journeys to the edge of civilization in northern Alaska at the request of Medora Slone (Riley Keough), a young mother whose son was killed by a pack of starving wolves. As Core attempts to help the woman process her grief, a strange and dangerous relationship between these two lonely souls develops.

But when Medora’s husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) returns from his brutal tour in the Iraq War, the news of his dead child ignites a violent chain of events across this frozen landscape. As Donald Marium (James Badge Dale), a local cop, races to stop Vernon’s seemingly senseless rampage, Core finds himself trapped on a perilous odyssey into the heart of darkness.

As a big fan of Blue Ruin and Blair’s work – if you haven’t seen his Melanie Lynskey Netflix film, stop sleeping on that! – I’m really curious about this one. But while watching the trailer, for a moment there, my brain thought I was watching Wind River all over again. Frigid snowy weather, a lonely wolf tracker, a mysterious death, a pissed off white dude, hm. Hopefully this isn’t as forgettable as that film was.

Hold the Dark makes its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival nest month and arrives on Netflix on September 28.

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