R | 1h 36m | Thriller, Drama | 2025
Jamie Lee Curtis originated the movie-character category and moniker “Scream Queen” in the first “Halloween.” Former professional-kiteboarder-turned-actress Maika Monroe has been crowned the latest scream queen (“It Follows,” “Watcher,” “Longlegs”).
Maika Monroe is my new favorite actress, so I wasn’t thrilled that noirish drama “In Cold Light,” about an Alberta drug dealer, doesn’t live up to her presence in this sans-thrills, by-the-numbers thriller. Monroe’s formidable charisma holds one’s attention throughout, despite the realization that her character was barely developed.
Out of the Frying Pan
Ava (Monroe) is caught in an FBI drug raid and sent to prison. She gets out two years later. Upon returning home, still on parole, she tries to go straight and mucks stalls at the Ponoka Stampede. She’s got long-standing issues with her dad, Will, a former rodeo champ. Will is played by the first deaf actor to ever win an Oscar, Troy Kotsur. Therefore, everyone in the family can sign. Eventually, Ava tells her twin brother, Tom (Jesse Irving), that she wants back in the drug business, in her former leadership role.
Into the Fire
Ava goes out on a drug run with Tom. They have a bag of cash and some drugs in the car; they get pulled over by a cop; there’s a shooting—Tom’s dead. Now Ava is a wanted woman on the run, having been framed for the crime.
It so happens that Will didn’t realize that his son Tom was also in the drug business, having picked up where his sister left off. There’s an impressively emotional but entirely signed, silent showdown between Kotsura and Monroe. Both actors are excellent, but the problem is that their emotional connection is never really established so this ends up more confusing than illuminating.
Ava’s dead set on not going back to prison, so she continues to run, gets a gun, returns to her old apartment, takes a bad guy hostage, and eventually runs into the formidable Claire (Oscar-winner Helen Hunt), who heads up the area’s drug business.
All in All
“In Cold Light” could be described as a bunch of pseudo-Freudian blather in the middle of a crime drama, or maybe a bunch of narco-trade-related violence in the middle of a psychological family study; either way, it’s mystifying enough to make you tune out. It occasionally hints at a better film—funnier, fiercer, and more attuned to a woman’s point of view. The intuition of that better film serves to heighten the frustration of watching all the wasted opportunities in the actual one. The waste extends to Helen Hunt joining Kotsur in the shortchanged-Oscar-winner department. “You can’t just walk away,” says Hunt. Maybe Ava can’t. But you can.
‘In Cold Light’
Director: Maxime Giroux
Starring: Maika Monroe, Helen Hunt, Troy Kotsur, Jesse Irving
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Release Date: Jan. 23, 2026
Rating: 2 1/2 stars out of 5
Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at features@epochtimes.nyc
