"Are you alright?" "Uh-uh." This question and answer occurs between Ann and Richard Dane, not long after their home has been invaded and the husband has shot dead the intruder. Unfortunately, the answer applies as well to Michael C. Hall, playing the everyman increasingly in over his head as director Jim Mickle's Cold in July proceeds along its dark and meandering way, something of a dangerous idea that almost makes sense. Employing Hall to labor beneath a starter mullet that enhances his already prominent brow, the producers of Cold in July would seem to have overshot East Texas of the late-1980's and placed him somewhere up (or down) The March of Progress. He never quite finds the character of the framing store manager, rendered vaguely to begin with by writers Mickle and Nick Damici. As with Emile Hirsch in another story of Texas mayhem, Killer Joe (2011), Hall is a non-entity with a half-hearted drawl at the center of the film. This is unexpe...