An 11th-hour appearance by Helen Hunt was never going to save “In Cold Light,” but the single scene she has is welcome nonetheless, mostly as a respite from the rest of the movie’s freneticism. As the latest in a long tradition of fearsome female crime bosses, a deglamorized Hunt gently underplays the menace. Unlike her underlings.
A depressing, downbeat thriller that hustles from one violent act to the next with only the flimsiest of narrative throughlines, the latest from the French Canadian director Maxime Giroux is an unfortunate misfire. After serving two years for drug dealing, Ava (Maika Monroe) arrives home to resume control of the criminal enterprise that her twin brother (Jesse Irving) is currently running. The universe, however, has other ideas, placing a rival gang, a false murder charge, a corrupt police force and unresolved issues with her bitter, rodeo-riding father (the Oscar winner Troy Kotsur) in her path. There’s also the small matter of a newly fatherless infant who needs rescuing. Life was a lot easier in the slammer.
At best, “In Cold Light” has a mood, a bleak sense of rubbed-raw relationships and dead-end dreams. What it doesn’t have, if we discount the baby, is a single sympathetic character. Patrick Whistler’s script is muddy, the baddies ill-defined and the talents of Kotsur and Monroe — the captivating center of horror movies like “It Follows” (2015) and “Longlegs” (2024) — ill-served. The cinematographer Sara Mishara strives to give life to the movie’s generically gritty locations, even cheekily filming one attack as a reflection in a lightbulb. But we hardly need the strange, symbolic shot of a lone bull blocking Ava’s path to understand that, no matter how fast she runs, her fate is already sealed.
In Cold Light Rated R for OxyContin in the glove box and a bullet in the brain. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.
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