WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Jeremy Saulnier's Hold the Dark, streaming now on Netflix.


The premise for Netflix's Hold the Dark seems simple enough -- a mother, Medora Sloane (Riley Keough), in grief over having her son abducted by wolves calls in a naturalist, Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), to lead the search party. However, the film takes a very dark (no pun intended) turn, which changes the entire complexion of the narrative.

In fact, not only do we view the characters and the tone of the flick differently from this point, the twist leaves us wondering who the heroes, villains and victims really are. To top it off, as the audience tries to piece this fork in the road together, it leads to another stark revelation and unearths yet another mystery buried deep in the Alaskan wilderness.

Based on William Giraldi's novel, Hold the Dark is a suspense-filled flick that starts off feeling like Mystic River, with Russell trying desperately to find a young boy, Bailey. Russell's a documentarian and wolf expert, and Medora's final hope as her husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) is off on duty in Iraq. As he searches for the child though, staying at Medora's house starts to get, well, freaky. Russell's first red flag comes as he's struggling to sleep one night and notices the woman naked, save for a wolf mask. She removes it and comes into his bed, but the move is not of a sexual nature. Instead, she tries to get him to strangle her. He resists, and as she calms down, he remembers how he saw wolves eating a young cub earlier in the snow.

This propels the first act and, more importantly, the first twist. Russell, spooked by the incident, begins to dig up more dirt on Medora, realizing her family's the only European one in the village, Keelut (which ironically means 'a demon who feasts on souls'). The resident shaman tells him Medora was possessed by a wolf-demon called a "tournaq," blighting her family. He's skeptical but returns to the house, only to find the woman missing, and Bailey's body in the basement, strangled to death. Medora was actually the killer, leaving Russell wondering why she invited him to solve the issue in the first place.

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The story then goes into No Country for Old Men territory for the second revelation, but mixing in influences from the likes of Stephen King and a bunch of slasher movies. Vernon is injured at the same time his son is killed and is brought back home. He turns into a silent killer after finding out what Medora did, slaughtering everyone he feels is guilty. This ranges from inattentive cops to the morgue attendants to the folks outside the village who helped Medora go to her hideaway, a spring she and Vernon often spent time together in.

Hold the Dark begins to get even more ritualistic and well, horror-esque, as Vernon buries his son in a box after a blood ritual. He also dons Medora's wolf-mask and goes hunting, just as we find out a shaman once advised his parents he had evil in him and it needed to be purged with blood oil. With all these clues unraveling, we're lead to believe Medora thought Bailey had this same evil inside, which is why she killed him and fled. But in the finale, when Russell (who's been picking up the clues all along) bares witness to their love for each other, all pieces fall into place.

As Russell tries to beat Vernon to Medora's location, he's wounded with an arrow. He then watches the husband try to strangle his wife, but when she removes Vernon's mask, they begin to kiss, proving that despite the death of their son, they missed and still love each other. As Russell fades out of consciousness, the documentarian realizes the truth thanks to past conversations with the mother. Their family were outcasts in the village, and when he asked Medora where she met Vernon, she told him they knew each other all their life.

Russell discerns they're brother and sister, recalling the family photos he saw when they were kids, and their stark resemblance, being of Norse blood with bright blue eyes. Medora was living with this darkness herself which she didn't want Bailey to inherit. It was guilt that he was the product of incest, and she sacrificed him so this darkness from her and Vernon, something she construed to be evil, would not pass down to the boy.

Now streaming on Netflix, Hold the Dark is directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and stars Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Badge Dale, Macon Blair, Julian Black Antelope and Beckham Crawford.