Hold the Dark

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. She admits that the father has yet to be informed of the child’s death. Medora mentions a hot spring to the north of town. That night he wakes to hear her whispering in the bathtub, scrubbing her back raw. He returns to the couch before watching her walk to him naked and wearing a carved wooden mask. Dropping the mask she lies next to him, silently crying before taking his hand and forcing him to choke her.

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. Walking away he is shot in the neck by a sniper and airlifted out.

In the morning Medora covers Core’s rifle barrel in tape and gives him a fur coat and fur boots. Setting out, Core meets an old woman who tells him Medora "knows evil". Upon finding a pack of wolves eating their young, Core falls down a slope, alerting the pack to his presence. He struggles to remove the tape before the pack stops and finally leaves. At the Slone house, he finds Medora gone and discovers Bailey's frozen, strangled body in the cellar. He confronts the old woman and accuses her of knowing. The villagers claim Medora is possessed by a wolf-demon, a tournaq.

Vernon returns from Iraq and is provided a hunting knife and gun by Cheeon, father of a girl that really was taken by the wolves. He goes to the morgue, killing the officers and the coroner, takes Bailey's body, and buries him in the snow.

Core explains to Detective Marium that when resources are scarce, wolves will sometimes eat their young, known as a “savaging.” Later he attempts to call the station to inform them of his encounter with the old woman before the call is disconnected.

Vernon proceeds to track Medora and commits several murders along the way, starting with the old woman after her attempts to explain that trying to stop Medora would have been pointless.

As Core finds the old woman dead, the officers show up to arrest Cheeon for aiding Vernon, but he opens fire from a window killing many of the officers. Marium disarms a booby trap and enters the home, killing him.

Continuing his search for Medora, Vernon confronts John, an elderly hunter who treated him with wolf-oil as a child for his psychopathy, and who provided Medora her mask, before killing him.

Core and Marium search for the hot springs, and is ambushed by Vernon. He shoots Marium in the neck with an arrow, killing him. Core finds Medora at the hot springs and warns her her husband is coming. Before they can flee, Vernon shoots Core in the chest. Vernon strangles Medora until she pushes the mask off his face and he releases her, they become intimate. Vernon removes the arrow from Core before he and Medora leaves, dig up Bailey's grave, and pull the coffin behind them as they trek through the snow. Core is rescued, and while being treated by the native villagers, a Nordic woman takes the boots that were given to him by Medora. He wakes up in the hospital with his daughter Amy at his bedside.

In September 2015, it was announced Jeremy Saulnier would direct the film, based upon a screenplay by Macon Blair; while Eva Maria Daniels, Russell Ackerman and John Schoenfelder would produce the film under their VisionChaos Productions banner and Addictive Pictures banners respectively, A24 would distribute the film.^[3] In January 2017, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film, with Anish Savjani and Neil Kopp joining as producers.^[4] In February 2017, Alexander Skarsgård, Riley Keough, James Bloor, James Badge Dale and Jeffrey Wright joined the cast of the film.^[5]

Principal photography began on February 27, 2017, and concluded on April 26, 2017. Filming took place in and around the areas surrounding Calgary, Drumheller and Kananaskis Country, Alberta, which were used to substitute for Alaska.^[6][7]