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Retired game hunter and full-time alcoholic Ray Swanson (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) faces an entirely different kind of hunt when a mystery man takes to kidnapping and murdering young women on his land. While Swanson attempts to fend off the killer, local Sheriff Gustafson (Annabelle Wallis) is hard at work trying to uncover his identity. Whether they mean to or not, together they might finally bring to justice the man who killed Swanson’s own daughter, years ago.
This chilly backwoods thriller finds the Game of Thrones star in appropriately grizzled form. The story by director Robin Pront and writer Micah Ranum doesn’t require him to do much but look sad and act world-weary and defeated. This he does well enough – his time as the one-handed Jaime Lannister certainly gave him plenty of practice playing a sad-sack has-been. This is the sort of role you’d usually see our modern Nic Cage playing, and the film certainly could have benefitted from something a bit livelier than Waldau is able to muster. Thankfully, Wallis is less subdued as the town Sheriff, and together their double act gets the job done.
What would Twin Peaks be like played straight? It would probably resemble The Silencing; a typical small-town crime story not dissimilar to The Backwoods or Insomnia. There’s little here to surprise hardened genre fans, save for a cool-looking killer and excellent cinematography. It looks pretty and it’s well cast, but it’s desperately dull and predictable – down to the boring reveal at the end. It does moody and atmospheric well, but that will only take you so far. Ultimately, it’s too muted for its own good.
