Maika Monroe’s lean athleticism – she used to be a professional kiteboarder – suits her to In Cold Light, a grungey thriller in which she plays a drug dealer who goes on the run when things take a “shit got real” turn.
It’s a subjective chase movie, very tightly focused on Monroe’s Ava, who we meet in a pre-credits sequence in the middle of a police raid during which she crashes through a window and tries to make a break for it. Post-credits it’s a few years later and Ava is fresh out of prison and trying to take back her drug business from her brother, who now has his feet under the table.
Things do not stay in that managerial realm for long and from the moment Ava goes on the run again, half out of her head on drugs and with her brother’s baby in her arms, we are largely on the run with her, with not much in the way of context. There is a bad cop out to get her, played by Allan Hawco, but that’s about all we have to go on.
Possibly also carried over from Monroe’s time flying along on surfboards is Ava’s loping walk, a relaxed dudish lollop that goes with her hoodie and total deadpan. We see more of the deadpan than the walk, director Maxime Giroux clearly having decided that artistically this thriller is going to be visually distinctive if nothing else. For the bulk of it, there is barely a medium or wide shot to be seen.
It’s a stylistic tic and eventually gets a bit wearing – where are we? – but for the most part it works. It also emphasises the sparseness of the plot. As does the decision to make Ava’s father deaf. He uses American Sign Language. Giroux and and writer Patrick Whistler clearly want it to be hard for the average viewer to get their bearings in this one.
It’s another interesting, experimental choice by Monroe, who was Beach Girl in Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring in 2013 – a bling-and-miss-her role – before hitting her stride in 2014 with The Guest and It Follows. Since then it’s been more of less a case of one for them (Watcher, Longlegs) and one for herself (War on the Range, 100 Nights of Hero). What they all share is the camera’s love of Monroe’s face. She’s not luscious in the way Adria Arjona is, but the planes of her face have a fascination of their own, which the lens gobbles up.
That said, there’s only so much “close-up on Maika” any film can take, and Giroux is probably overdoing it here, though he has the excellent cinematographer Sara Mishara on hand to mix things up by laying on the coloured lights in a style reminiscent of the great Christopher Doyle.
It is all done very well, though it’s got to be said that it’s all a bit thin. Style over content in spades. And Giroux more or less abandons his USP – the tight closeness, the chase dynamic, the intense lighting and the boingy synths – for a finale that’s not a long way away from a Hallmark movie. Bit strange.
Helen Hunt, though, Helen Hunt. Playing the bad guy behind the bad guy. Nice touch. I liked a lot of this movie though there is quite a lot of time for head-scratching as Ava sprints away from one bad situation and into another. There’s a Mexican standoff at one point and, blow me, I couldn’t work out who wanted what and why. But isn’t that the point? Yes… yes. Maika, how about doing a smart conspiracy thriller soonish, a remake of Klute maybe. You’d be great in that too. Yours, a fan.
In Cold Light – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
