It took me a while to get ahold of the narrative tone of The Hostiles, because, when it opens on a white family living alone on the frontier in 1892, I saw trespassers-not good honest people. And when the landowners ride up to ask you what you're doing on their land, and you answer the door with a gun in your hand, well, you can't really expect them to be very neighborly.
But then it's made clear that these aren't the "good" Indians, these are the kind who kill children. Director Scott Cooper wants you to think there are two kinds of Indians; the savage, bloodthirsty ones that haunt your night...