Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

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Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#1 Post by Persona » Sun Sep 30, 2018 9:13 am

Hold the Dark is on Netflix now... and I kind of liked it?

I get the criticisms. Yeah, it's super bleak and dour. Everyone speaks in a sort of gruff whisper that ranges from confused to menacing to just plain lifeless. The character development is a little scant but also more opaque because of how the performances are rendered. Some of the dialogue gets the eyes rolling. And yeah, some of the story aspects are intentionally baffling--including the ending--but I didn't mind that.

And, man, Saulnier knows how to construct some scenes (there is a face-off in the middle that is just superbly realized in its intensity and management of visual geography). And the cinematography (same guy who did BRIDGEND and LEAN ON PETE) is really great. At the end of it I thought about it a lot, even though I didn't quite know what to think.

Not a clear, indisputable success but it's striking and has an impact.

MongooseCmr
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:50 pm

Re: The Films of 2018

#2 Post by MongooseCmr » Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:34 am

I wasn’t impressed by it, and will admit up top that I stopped watching around the hour mark as more plot got piled on to what I already wasn’t really into to start. I’d cite all the same criticisms you do, but I’m really more disappointed in Saulnier’s trajectory as an artist. Blue Ruin is one of the few recent revenge movies that commits to the idea that violent revenge is just as bad as the initial act of violence. Green Room really drops that thoughtfulness and doubles down on the gore, which put me off but was still a “fun” time. But there’s nothing remotely fun or thoughtful here, just a very downbeat, dour movie presumably climaxing in ultraviolence like the rest. He’s gone from treating violence seriously to making serious depictions of movie violence, which is the exact thing I thought Blue Ruin was against.

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Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: The Films of 2018

#3 Post by Persona » Sun Sep 30, 2018 1:35 pm

MongooseCmr wrote:
Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:34 am
I wasn’t impressed by it, and will admit up top that I stopped watching around the hour mark as more plot got piled on to what I already wasn’t really into to start. I’d cite all the same criticisms you do, but I’m really more disappointed in Saulnier’s trajectory as an artist. Blue Ruin is one of the few recent revenge movies that commits to the idea that violent revenge is just as bad as the initial act of violence. Green Room really drops that thoughtfulness and doubles down on the gore, which put me off but was still a “fun” time. But there’s nothing remotely fun or thoughtful here, just a very downbeat, dour movie presumably climaxing in ultraviolence like the rest. He’s gone from treating violence seriously to making serious depictions of movie violence, which is the exact thing I thought Blue Ruin was against.
Hmm, see, I thought this was a bit of a reversal from Green Room in that I agree with you there was sort of an exploitation vibe to the violence in that one whereas with this all the violence is very much NOT fun, even during the immaculately staged action scene in the middle. In fact, I would call the violence here "painful and sad" but since the characters are already a bit lifeless to begin with and you barely care about them, it doesn't read to that level, unfortunately.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#4 Post by dda1996a » Sun Sep 30, 2018 2:39 pm

I never found the violence in Green Room thrilling, personally, but very effective.

connor
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:03 pm

Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#5 Post by connor » Sun Sep 30, 2018 9:38 pm

Massively disappointing especially since I've been impressed by Saulnier. Though I should've suspected as much as the book shares all the fatal flaws. Anyone who decided to make a literal adaptation was doomed from the start. Both the movie and the book are like No Country for Old Men written by an adolescent: "senseless violence...what does it all mean?" etc etc. A bunch of blood, downbeat production design and dour monologues does not achieve any kind of profundity alone. The scene in No Country where Chigurgh gets randomly hit by a car then relies on the good will of two kids...that's the kind of beat that eludes Hold the Dark. It subverts the "primordial evil" that both Chigurh has claimed as his mantra and that Sheriff Bell fears has overtaken the world (the scene with Bell and his uncle talking about the old days does something similar in the book and movie). Hold the Dark pursues this childish "primordial evil" thing at every turn and it's just goddamn boring. Especially the lame attempt at making it somehow timeless ("a war on the news," a millennial husband and wife who talk like they're from the 1840s Ozarks).

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Lost Highway
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 am
Location: Berlin, Germany

Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#6 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:58 am

I don’t get the acclaim for Saulnier, he just applies a hipster gloss to well worn genre tropes. I found neither his take on the revenge movie nor his Nazis vs punks siege thriller in any way exceptional. I guess this won’t change my mind.

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barryconvex
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Joined: Fri Aug 24, 2012 10:08 pm
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Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#7 Post by barryconvex » Fri Oct 12, 2018 6:51 am

Lost Highway wrote:
Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:58 am
I don’t get the acclaim for Saulnier, he just applies a hipster gloss to well worn genre tropes. I found neither his take on the revenge movie nor his Nazis vs punks siege thriller in any way exceptional. I guess this won’t change my mind.
No, it won't. This movie sucks for all the reasons the board has pointed out.

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Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#8 Post by Persona » Fri Oct 12, 2018 11:32 am

Chaw over at Film Freak Central has quite a passionate argument in support of the film.

I don't fully agree with him, or at least the film didn't work as well for me as it obviously did for him, but it's certainly a take worth reading.

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jazzo
Joined: Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:02 am

Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#9 Post by jazzo » Fri Oct 12, 2018 1:21 pm

I am a fan of Saulnier, but agree with the general consensus of the board - this is a fairly weak, unformed work with one or two stand-out sequences, mostly because of the craft involved. But it's also a reason I love Chaw as a critic. Even when I vehemently disagree, he can often make me re-evaluate my own view on things. In this case, however, his passion didn't win out.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Hold the Dark (Jeremy Saulnier, 2018)

#10 Post by DarkImbecile » Sun Mar 14, 2021 1:47 am

In-depth examination of Saulnier’s “revenge triptych” (including Green Room and Blue Ruin) by Roxana for rogerebert.com; this is the best defense I’ve read for Hold the Dark, which I now want to revisit and reconsider. It’s certainly occupied an unsettled place in my mind since I saw it, and I think Hadadi gets at how it digs hooks into you even as it doesn’t work as smoothly as his prior two films.

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