Written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindeloff
Directed by Craig Zobel
Starring Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz
Running time: 1 hour and 29 minutes
MPAA Rated R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout
A bit of a disclaimer: Famously, the band on the Titanic continued playing even as the ship was going down and there are moments where writing about movies at this point in time has that feeling. The world is a mess, people are anxious and things seem uncertain, but people need something to take their minds off of it all. Be prepared, stock up on canned goods and for Satan’s sake *wash your damned hands* but beyond that, worrying about COVID-19 isn’t going to help any. So that, to me, is why movies and all we who love talking about them, should keep on keeping on. Like any bad times, we’ll get through it together; us and you and the movies. So now onto my actual review of The Hunt.
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Genre film has dealt with social and political issues for basically as long as there has been genre film, right? Maybe not 100% of the time, but in general if you're looking for a message of some kind, you're likely able to find one. Last September, The Hunt was delayed for ostensibly political reasons: both the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings were extremely fresh wounds to our country's psyche and Universal Pictures didn't feel it was the best time to release a movie where one group of people is hunting another group with guns (among other weapons). Added to that was the rumor that the flick itself was inherently political and you can perhaps understand what all the hubbub was about. Depending on what you might want out of your entertainments, I have either good or bad news: The Hunt isn't a genre flick with political subtext, it's one that uses politics as set dressing; as an excuse to get to what it really is: a brisk, funny, action-forward head-trip revenge story on a large scale. It has laughs, great performances, good-natured gore and sizable body count, and these days, what more could you ask for that something to take your mind off things?
Now for a brief history on hunting people for fun (and profit): The granddaddy of them all is the story The Hounds of Zaroff by Richard Connell, published in 1924 or as it is more well-known The Most Dangerous Game. In it, a big game hunter named Rainsford falls off a boat and ends up on the island of another big game hunter, General Zaroff. Eventually the general reveals that hunting no longer thrills him and that he intends to hunt Rainsford because, being a fellow big game hunter, he might actually pose a challenge and anyway, Spoilers: Rainsford wins. Richard Connell didn't invent the concept of people-hunting, but The Most Dangerous Game is definitely the ur-source for most modern versions, many of which were directly adapted from it.
The concept of human-hunting is itself inherently political. Whether expressly stated, the ones doing the hunting are almost always wealthy, old money types, a character trope that is incredibly easy to read as "conservatives" or "The 1%", especially when most of the more recent version of the Hounds of Zaroff story explicitly involve the wealthy hunting the poor (see Surviving the Game and The Pest among others). What The Hunt asks you is, what if some of the left-leaning "liberal elite" were the ones doing the hunting, and more than that, what if they did it to "own" the conservatives?
But that's about as political as The Hunt gets. Screenwriters Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof have inverted the common cliché, and done just enough worldbuilding around that conceptual inversion to allow The Hunt room to run. The politicking of it all is just wallpaper, and that's a good thing. Nobody needs to go out to the cinema just to get preached at for 89 minutes. In this pandemic? Please. Seriously tho, I can't even count the number of times I've said aloud at my TV "I get it!" when a movie or series is just hammering its message home a little *too* hard.
So it's actually kind of refreshing to see something that could very easily have gotten preachy go the other direction. Cuse & Lindeloff, as well as director Craig Zobel and the entire cast, walk a fine line where basically every character is a low- to medium-grade moron regardless of their political affiliations, with the notable exception being the absolutely astounding Betty Gilpin as Crystal. Crystal isn't the most charismatic person you'll ever see, she has trouble expressing herself and occasionally will stare blankly into the middle distance while figuring something out, but she's legitimately a much sharper knife than you'd first suspect and Gilpin plays her perfectly.
Crystal is one of about a dozen conservatives from many walks of life who awaken gagged in a wooded area before finding their way to a field where they find a massive supply crate containing a small arsenal of weaponry and one very cute pig named Orwell. We follow these Hunt-ees as they quickly come under fire, scramble to find cover and then try desperately to figure out both where they are and how to get away. The first act of the hunt is straight gonzo murder games with an ever-increasing death toll, but once that slows down a pace and Crystal becomes the focal point, things really get good, entirely thanks to Gilpin. At one point Crystal launches into an explanatory metaphor to describe her plan of action that's just an elaborately worded version of The Tortoise and the Hare but Gilpin's delivery takes a well-worn children's parable and carries it through to a surprisingly dark ending that hints at some of what makes Crystal so competent a survivor.
The Hunt is by no means essential viewing, but that's kind of why I liked it. It's an entertainment that seems most concerned with leaving you entertained. It's short, gory but not *too* gory, laugh out loud funny a lot of the time and a great way to distract yourself from the stresses of the current age. Seriously y'all, we *RIGHT NOW* are living through a baker's dozen different apocalypses and none of us are getting any younger. Treat yourself to a 90-minute break watching a bunch of reprehensible caricatures killing each other.
Stay in and order it on VOD!
Laugh at their dismemberment!
Make yourself a big bowl of popcorn and crack a beer!
You deserve it!
Can I get a “Hell yeah”?!
Long live the movies!
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This piece was written for Moviejawn dot com which also features tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine and also listen to the I Saw It In a Movie podcast.
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