Director: Craig Zobel
Writers: Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz
Genre: Action, Horror
Country: United States
The Hunt wants you to believe it’s a clever movie. It’s not.
That sums it, feel free to exit now.
But really, probably the most frustrating thing about The Hunt is it wanting to eat its B-movie cake and have its message-movie cake too – derailing what really ought to be just a fun bloody rollick. Of course, The Hunt‘s premise feeds directly into the mediocre satire and messaging it delivers, so I guess I’m saying The Hunt is fundamentally flawed.
The Hunt follows a group of Republican folk kidnapped and thrown into a random forest, where they quickly discover they’re being murdered ad nauseam. One of these people, Crystal (Betty Gilpin), manages to survive the initial slaughter and heads to kill the group of liberal elites responsible.
A loaded premise, to be sure – and to be fair, movies better than The Hunt could do a lot more with it. Each character here is more or less a caricature of their political orientation, which makes sense as this is meant to be satirical, but holy fuck these are agonizing. They are very much Baby’s First Political Joke on left- and right-wing people, not so much pointing out how annoying the extremes on either spectrum tend to be than being annoying at how extremely low-brow it is. This has the unfortunate side effect of zapping any ounce of fun straight out of the film when we’re graced with such characters. When you have an SJW stereotype spouting off (and it is THE most basic incarnation you can conjure off the top of your head), bringing up hot-button issues without resolution or insight, it’s like writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof are actively trying to yank you from the movie for no satisfying purpose at all, making what’s supposed to be a Battle Royale-type B-movie an occasional chore instead.
Thank god, then, for Gilpin, who’s The Hunt’s secret weapon without even truly appreciating it, I think. Her body language tells Crystal’s story in lieu of a script that offers little, delivering a performance with an assured, slightly eccentric, almost Tarantino-esque vibe, including a “tortoise and hare” monologue that she chews the shit out of. Every scene with Gilpin is eminently watchable and The Hunt would be galling without her energy.
We get a few other familiar faces, like Emma Roberts and Ike Barinholtz, and all of them die very quickly and very brutally. To the extent of The Hunt being a gore movie, it plays that card effectively – you have people getting cut in half, getting their faces blasted off, getting heels stabbed through the eyes. It’s quite disgusting and the effects are excellent. Jane Rizzo’s editing is nicely consistent, keeping us well oriented in space, and the sound design is appropriately loud, with crunches and bangs getting the oomph you’d expect from this type of picture. The primal thrill of these moments tends to be dulled by those rascally caricatures, so they’re never too thrilling or ever very satisfying. Crystal’s fight with Athena (Hilary Swank), the ringleader of these murderous elites (“Athena” is also the goddess of war, in another example of The Hunt’s inertia towards subtlety), is a key exception to all this. It’s an amazing scene, one of the few moments in The Hunt with verve and electric ferocity – easily the best part of the movie, where everything it seems to want to be clicks, even if for a brief moment relative to the 90-minute runtime.
Then you have the twist towards the end, attempting to tie The Hunt’s commentary together, suggesting how extreme partisanship can impact everyday people. It’s a decent enough sentiment, yes, and it’s not wrong, but it’s also something a level-headed person is probably aware of already, so there’s that. Having to gruel through an hour and some of painfully written characters to get to the overall point still means grueling through an hour and some of painfully written characters, plus it’s not like this twist retroactively makes them any better.
So what we’re left with, aside from Gilpin and Swank (who’s very game and unhinged), are the technicalities. The naturalistic lighting from cinematographer Darran Tiernan hits the right amount of dreariness, with the large quantities of blood splatter offering the only true flashes of colour. Director Craig Zobel does a functional job until the final fight scene, which is full of style, and if the rest of the movie matched that scene it would be outstanding all around. That isn’t the case, and instead we’re asked to put up with a script that thinks throwing out rock-stupid obvious stereotypes amounts to cleverness, and that’s a tall order indeed.
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