In Cold Light Review

October 9, 2025 at 9:21pm
By Jason Stettner

Ava (Maika Monroe) is a dealer, she finds herself in what appears to be a setup and ends up going to jail. Time has passed and she’s ready to go out and get back into the regular world once again. This is where the narrative really begins as she starts to explore what it’s like to be out there working a normal job while craving the adventure of her previous dealing.

Her twin is trying to assist in this transition and upon a certain shocking moment that is really well executed in the film she’s then on the run. There’s a mix of people after her and largely Ava is just moving around trying not to get caught while dashing about. She’s smart about it and there’s some luck involved as she goes along which makes it rather interesting.

It’s neat how she escapes and deals with the mounting problems while trying to somewhat do what is right considering the problems she’s had up to this point. While it’s an interesting set of chases it doesn’t really go anywhere or break from the mold that this sort of film usually heads towards.

It’s a gritty well shot venture that really puts you into a grim side of a city. It’s a believable environment with some grounded folks going about doing their business. It gets a tad weird however when we get to a quick latter portion of the movie that’s brief and then it just skips to the end. It’s really jarring there despite other elements being well thought out.

Monroe delivers here and holds the film together. A great performance that kept things interesting enough throughout despite me feeling as though things were starting to get slightly boring. There’s some nice levels of violence here as well in painting some actual injuries that could happen due to the situations so that helps add to the more gritty, grounded and believable scenario.

The Conclusion

In Cold Light provides a shocking kick-off and an interesting chase but it doesn’t really seem to have any sort of truly unique or interesting ending to cap it off. I really did feel that Monroe’s character and performance held this together.

It was still sort of boring and kind of meandered. I sort of went, “that’s it?” as it reached its ending as it really didn’t seem to have much to say or really have a satisfying conclusion. It somewhat makes sense where things went but at the same time it felt really sort of, shoulder shrug I guess as it all wrapped up.

The situation was sort of jarring as they just went somewhere else and came back, it was sort of weird and I didn’t really get why they needed such an environmental change despite it looking lovely as you flew towards the destination. Anyways, the chasing and set off to that was well done but it sort of ended up falling flat for me as it wrapped up. It did at times feel slightly boring and slow which may impact some viewer’s engagement in keeping with it.

In Cold Light Review at Theater with Standard Viewing
Screening Provided by Calgary Film

Rating Overall: 5.5