Hold the Dark
Hold the Dark is a 2018 American neo-Western action thriller film directed by Jeremy Saulnier from a screenplay by Macon Blair. It is based upon the novel of the same name by William Giraldi. The film stars Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough, Tantoo Cardinal, and Julian Black Antelope. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2018, and was released on September 28, 2018, by Netflix.
Plot
In December 2004, Medora Slone summons Russell Core to hunt down the wolves responsible for the disappearance of three small children in the village of Keelut, Alaska, including her 6-year-old son Bailey. Medora mentions a hot spring to the north of town.Medora's husband Vernon is fighting in Iraq. He discovers another American soldier raping a local woman. Vernon wounds the rapist with a knife and hands the weapon to the woman to finish him off.
While tracking the wolves, Core meets an old woman who tells him Medora "knows evil". He finds a pack of wolves eating their young. At the Slone house, he finds Medora missing and discovers Bailey's frozen, strangled body in the cellar. The villagers claim Medora is possessed by a wolf-demon.
Vernon returns from Iraq and goes to the morgue. He kills the officers and the coroner, takes Bailey's body, and buries him in the snow. Vernon proceeds to track Medora and commits several murders along the way, including John, an elderly hunter who treated him with wolf-oil as a child for his psychopathy.
Core finds Medora at the hot springs and warns her husband is coming. Before they can flee, Vernon shoots Core in the chest with an arrow. Vernon strangles Medora until she pushes the mask off his face and he releases her. Vernon and Medora leave, dig up Bailey's grave, and pull the coffin behind them as they trek through the snow. Core is rescued and wakes up in the hospital with his daughter Amy at his bedside.