In Cold Light Review: On the Run From Family

If your vision of Canada is all moose, maple syrup, and ice hockey, Alberta is the place that may disabuse you of that notion. It’s basically the Texas Panhandle. It’s Southern Oklahoma. It’s cattle and oil and cowboy hats and junkies and dealers and petty crimes and rodeos. It’s where Ava (Maika Monroe, Longlegs, It Follows) calls home, in the isolated town of Ponoka: population 7,000, and maybe a bit more for the Ponoka Stampede, when a few tourists roll up in the RVs to the stadium.

Canadian director Maxime Giroux is likely best known to American audiences for his interfaith multilingual romance, Felix and Meira. With crime drama In Cold Light, the Francophone filmmaker makes his English-language-only debut, with ASL interludes from Ava’s father, Will (CODA Oscar winner Troy Kotsur). Not that he really communicates with his daughter at all, giving her a cursory “welcome home” hug after she spends a couple of years in jail for drug dealing. But then, Ponoka’s not the kind of place that specializes in second chances: not for Ava, who can barely hold down a job shoveling manure at the Stampede, and not for Will, who thinks he can drag his bowlegged and broken body back in the saddle for another run as a bronco buster. The only member of the family that’s got any forward momentum is Ava’s twin bother, Tom (Jesse Irving), who’s leaving the drug business for an oil job, and he still ends up with two holes in his head courtesy of a hit. Ava’s the only witness, leading to the inevitable cat-and-mouse run from the killers.

This should be a perfect fit for Monroe: As shown with the chilly serial killer flick Watcher, she has a rare ability to fill otherwise empty spaces with character and emotion. Yet Patrick Whistler’s low-key script rarely gives her much to truly dig into. There are underlying themes, most especially surrounding failed parents and the children they let down, and the vague sense that the whole family is cursed to best be alone. Yet this is all subsumed by Ava’s search for the mysterious Claire (Helen Hunt), who seems to be responsible for her current woes.

Giroux appear to be striving for a dark understatement, a tone emphasized by the hazy camera work of his longtime cinematographer, Sara Mishara, and the ambient, rumbling score by his Norbourg composer, Philippe Brault. Instead, In Cold Light remains emotionally distant, as repressed and tightly wrapped as the criminals among whom it walks. Everyone is carrying some kind of family damage or family bond that is their defining character trait – even the corrupt cop (Allan Hawco) responsible for the hit sends his son as triggerman and proves his parenting skills by giving him an “attaboy” while the gunsmoke still swirls.

But there’s such a distancing effect between the tone and the content that disinterest is inherent. In Cold Light explains rather than explores the broken family dynamics, and having Ava pine over a dead mother she barely remembers seems overt and heavy-handed. When Claire finally delivers the inevitable heavily underlined villain speech about children with a single surviving parent, it carries meaning but no real heft.

In Cold Light is far better constructed and executed than its generic, straight-to-video title might imply, but it’s too monotonous – in the literal meaning of the word – to reach its aspirations or to really use its cast. Hunt in particular is stuck in a limbo between “misused” and “miscast,” and the fact that both Monroe and Kotsur leave at least a little impact makes the film’s tonal shortcomings even more disappointing.

This article appears in January 23 • 2026.