What’s Friday night like for the Inupiat teens of Barrow, Alaska? Pretty much the same as everywhere else — beer, loud music, girlfriends squabbling with boyfriends — except there’s no night to speak of. “You’re gonna be waiting a long time,” one girl says as her friend stares at the sky outside a raucous house party. “The sun doesn’t set till August.”
The setting for this small-scale drama, hometown to director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, is so unique and gorgeously shot you find yourself wishing it was a documentary. It descends into predictability when friends Qalli (Josiah Patkotak) and Aivaaq (Frank Qutuq Irelan) are involved in the death of their friend James (John Miller) following a meth-fueled brawl during a Saturday seal hunt. They decide to dump his body in the icy water and pass it off as a snow machine accident, paving the way for an investigation headed by Qalli’s concerned but suspicious dad (Teddy Kyle Smith).
Barrow’s frozen vistas are a perfect match for the noir tone of “On the Ice.” Unfortunately, the emotional landscape of MacLean’s stoic main character, Qalli, is often as blank as the tundra.