#in cold light

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Allan Hawco as Bob Whyte (In Cold Light)

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Jessie Hobson interviews Allan Hawco behalf of In Cold Light.

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Poster for In Cold Light

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‘In Cold Light’ Movie Review: Stubbornly compelling and focused on feeling (2026)

In Cold Light isn’t interested in being slick. It wants to feel like grit under your nails - the kind of film where dust and neon share the same palette. From the moment Ava, played by scream queen Maika Monroe, steps out of a busted hotel room with blood on her jacket, the movie unfurls less like a story and more like a long, grinding breath you’re invited to hold.

Re-emerging from prison with the hope of a new start, Ava’s world is textured with the dust and toll of hard labour on her estranged father’s ranch. There is genuine pathos in their uneasy coexistence — Academy Award winner Troy Kotsur, who plays Ava’s deaf father Will, adds weight with his grounded performance to this fractured bond — yet the narrative often shakes off its potential, tethered instead to familiar crime-thriller beats that blunt its emotional edge.

The world around Ava is equally as raw. Maxime Giroux’s direction bathes this ride in colours that smudge into each other — twilight greys, rodeo dust orange, and the sharp blue of trailer-park lights — giving each frame a hint of dread and beauty all at once. Alberta’s landscapes are magnified by striking cinematography, haunting in their vast desolation - echoing the isolation that Ava carries within, a form of visual poetry in itself.

Still, there’s something stubbornly compelling about In Cold Light. It is less about what it shows than what it feels like — a long night, half-seen through rain-spattered glass, where you keep waiting for the sun even as you know it might never come.

Written by: Timothy Nguyen

In Cold Light is in theatres in Canada on February 27.

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Allan just giving the good advice of never employing your own father. It could get awkward.

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In Cold Light (2025) - Maika Monroe Is Arrested Scene