In a campaign to break out of the genre walls I’ve built around myself, I decided to review a movie labeled “adventure” called Hold the Dark.

The story is about an obscure Alaskan town plagued by a recurring, terrible tragedy: their young boys and girls are being taken by wolves. When Medora Sloane’s child is taken while her husband is off fighting in a war, she writes a desperate plea to the only man she can think of that could help.

Russell Core has hunted and killed a wolf before. Although it’s nothing he wants to do again, he’s made the trek to Sloane’s village in hopes he can offer some slice of help.

Although this is the summary given, after the beginning of the movie, it quickly veers off this path and into territory I would most certainly not call “adventure.”

I would almost classify the movie as one of those deep artistic types due to the lack of words and plentiful sections where I knew I would be missing the meaning if not for the abundance of guns and dark Alaskan landscape. I would put this movie into the horror category more than anything else. It was a definite setback in my willingness to step outside of my safe genre box.

Not only did I struggle with the whole genre issue and have to hide under my covers for half the time, but I was constantly cringing at the second-rate acting. Although they were able to accurately portray the insanity of many of the characters, many other emotions are drowned out. A big issue, personally, was how much the acting reminded me of the Twilight series. I feel like that says enough.

The only redeeming factor was the gorgeous setting of the movie, which supplied it with multiple breathtaking scenes. A section consisted of many aerial shots, and for a second you can forget the rest of the movie.

Hold the Dark’s many downsides resulted in a less-than-entertaining movie that evoked disgust, chills, and overall boredom. To say that I was deterred from testing my genre walls again any time soon would be an understatement.