Maika Monroe has gradually developed her own cinematic niche over the past few years, starring in low-key dramas and psychological thrillers that have offered her a wider emotional canvas to work with than mainstream projects ever could. If “It Follows” was a highlight of her early career, and “Watcher” revealed further promise in her acting chops, “Longlegs” made her one of the most fascinating talents to look for in the horror-thriller space. Even in occasional duds, her enigmatic presence felt worthwhile, especially to genre fans. That may also be the case with “In Cold Light,” a crime thriller that focuses on her character’s interiority, effectively becoming a brooding psychological thriller that patiently reveals a character-driven tale.
Written by Patrick Whistler and directed by Maxime Giroux, the drama unfolds at a deliberate pace, revealed mainly through Monroe’s character, Ava’s hauntingly watchful eyes. The film doesn’t waste any time in establishing the tragic incident that turns her life upside down. Within the first few moments, we see Ava being dragged by the law enforcement officers from a decrepit room during a last-minute drug bust. She seems to be under the influence, like everyone else in that room, which could have been a fodder for mystery about her identity. Is she a drug supplier or just another addict? The film reveals that within a matter of minutes.
After establishing this set-up without wasting any time, the film quickly shifts gears to its character-driven drama about a wounded and traumatized convict trying to get back on her feet. In her case, it means getting back to her past life. You would imagine that someone would choose a different line of work or stay away from the heat after spending a long time behind bars. After all, you wouldn’t want to repeat your mistakes and fall into the same trap. Ava, however, seems to be cut from a different cloth. Call it grit or call it resilience, she wants to be back in the business, living the life she had, willingly or unwillingly, built for herself.
Yet, despite her vigor, she gets neither the acknowledgment nor the respect she seeks and deserves. It feels like the world has moved on without her, and she is still stuck in her past, hoping to reclaim her spot in the family business. Her peers are either reluctant or afraid of letting her back in, which leaves her with a profound sense of hurt and betrayal. Shortly after being released from prison, she witnesses a traumatic accident that propels her life, once again, in a whole other direction. The script invites us into her interior life to investigate the effects of every cataclysmic incident on her psyche by focusing on her subjective point of view.
The film utilizes Ava’s emotional baggage to steer the drama forward, offering us a palpable sense of her alienation, tinged with unwarranted guilt. We see her in a constant battle between her internal and external factors, while deciding between self-determination and self-acceptance. Her desperation to demand what she deserves becomes her bane, which, considering the men around her, seems potentially rooted in their gendered bias. The script doesn’t elaborate on any detail on that front, apart from briefly touching upon it in a later interaction with a crime boss. Instead, it conveys Ava’s plight in acclimating to her altered post-prison life, which takes her on a path to some painful realizations about her fate.
The script keeps its expositions minimal, instead letting the performances and the atmosphere set the tone and reveal all there is to know about the characters’ pathos. Monroe becomes an ideal performer in this context, as she can convey Ava’s tragedy through her quietly chilling performance, revealing plenty even through a gaze or a stutter.
She plays Ava almost as a ghostly presence in everyone else’s life, living simply as a residue of her emotions, which goes in line with the film’s core theme of external circumstances determining her life more than she can. Monroe’s impressive act is a highlight of this film, apart from the way the script thematically connects the first and final beats of Ava’s journey.
Yet, despite it all, there’s something amiss in this atmospheric thriller. You feel the sting of Ava’s overbearing misery, but you don’t quite understand the depth of her situation. That’s likely because the supporting characters are so thinly sketched that we barely get a sense of who they are. Those underdeveloped characters dampen the effect of some intense scenes that could have used some dramatic weight.
There are still great actors like Troy Kotsur and Helen Hunt, who make the most of the given material, with Kotsur shining through the full-bodied intensity of his performance, while Hunt, through her ability to effortlessly command the screen with her razor-sharp delivery, much like how she did in “Hacks.”
The other players, however, don’t leave any impression, owing to the lack of character development. That is particularly disappointing for a script such as this one that doesn’t deviate substantially from similar dramas about betrayal and reclamation. Therefore, you’re left with a slow-burning thriller that stands out in the contemporary space but may not be remembered in the long run, despite a moving central performance.
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