In Cold Light (now on Hulu) has us thinking we’ve officially hit the will-watch-anything-with-Maika-Monroe-in-it era. The star who helped make It Follows, Watcher and Longlegs extraordinary cinema anchors Canadian director Maxime Giroux’s gritty neo-noir with her ability to wordlessly convey complex emotions, a skill that works remarkably well with the film’s pedal-to-the-metal pace. Which is to say, Monroe is a boon to most any screenplay out there.
The Gist: Ava (Monroe) hits the crack pipe and lies on her back in a sprawling field beneath the expanse of the Alberta sky. Later, she makes her bleary-eyed way back to a skeevy drug den and arrives just in time for the cops to kick down the door. She leaps through the glass of a second-story window and flees, but it’s fruitless. Two years later, she gasps and pukes into her prison-cell toilet, suffering a panic attack on the day of her release — things frankly are easier for her on the inside, as we’re about to realize when her twin brother Tom (Jesse Irving) picks her up and takes her to her father Will (Coda Oscar winner Troy Kotsur), who seems reluctant to direct any warmth in her direction. A tortured history here, perhaps.
Of course, that’s complicated. Will doesn’t know his favorite child Tom is a drug dealer like Ava was prior to her arrest, nor is he aware of Tom’s newborn daughter. Will’s horses apparently aren’t the only ones who wear blinders. Ava works in the stables of a rodeo arena where Will wants to stage what will soon be his ill-fated return to the ring, where he was once a champion. She shovels shit and collects trash and feeds the horses and cows and goes back to a sad little apartment to meet with her parole officer, who asks Ava what she really wants. “To be free,” she replies, “and to be alone.”
However, the ties that bind, especially Ava’s, make those desires rather difficult to achieve. Tom gives her a significant bundle of cash as payment for not ratting on him and his compatriots in exchange for her own freedom. And she wants back in. But before anything is discussed or argued about or settled they’re blindsided by, well, let’s just call it a sudden burst of violence that puts Ava on the run from a corrupt cop (Allan Hawco) who’s apparently affiliated with a rival drug ring. Soon enough, Ava’s dashing through grimy streets and damp back alleys with Tom’s baby in her arms, looking for a way out of this jam. And from our perspective, there doesn’t seem to be one. She’s backed into a suffocatingly tight corner. Maybe the only way out is through.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Giroux traffics in some Good Time tension and neon-nighttime shenanigans (minus any comedy) and crosses it with some Taylor Sheridan-isms (think Hell or High Water) and a third-act big-name-plays-a-crime-lord move a la A History of Violence.
Performance Worth Watching: At this point, any further exaltation of Monroe’s front-of-camera skill might be excessive.
Sex And Skin: None.
Our Take: OK, one more thing about Monroe: Not sure In Cold Light transcends its limitations without her. She maintains the soul of Ava’s broken character amidst the propulsive fight-or-flight survival-mode clip of the second and third acts, often wordlessly expressing bits of self-discovery, that there’s more to Ava than self-preservation. (A flash-forward-style dream sequence proves to be memorably poignant among some of the film’s bits of forced-profundity symbolism.) Patrick Whistler’s screenplay is light on dialogue, but gives Monroe a few opportunities to dig in and deliver a moment, the strongest ones across from Kotsur — he’s deaf, so they add a layer of communicative expression via American Sign Language — and a late-arriving Helen Hunt.
Although Giroux’s visual sensibilities are uniformly strong in capturing movement and establishing mood, there’s a seeming disconnect between the writing and direction. The film doesn’t quite balance throw-us-in-the-deep-end immersion and the narrative clarity necessary to fully establish setting and contextual details. It leaves the fringes of plot fuzzy and ill-defined — sometimes a little more exposition is necessary —and occasionally loses sight of Ava’s I-want-to-be-free-and-alone character motivation. But In Cold Light features a typically dialed-in and focused Monroe, delivering the type of quietly charismatic performance that cuts through inconsistent writing.
Our Call: Maika Monroe Fan Club Member No. 68664 over here. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
