The Hunt was seemingly controversial, but it’s satire mixed with Saw violence! It was delayed from a September 2019 release to March of this year. The film is directed by Craig Zobel who also directed Z for Zachariah (2015) based on the post-apocalyptic novel by Richard O’Brien. It is written by Nick Cuse who worked on The Leftovers and Damon Lindelof credited with the Watchmen series. This is a Blumhouse produced film which is always better than the premise. We open with a swelling of dramatic music as a mysterious woman checks her phone texts, there is a mention of The Hunt and the camera focuses on it. In a sense this is commenting on the destructiveness of social media. Some of the deaths may be spoiled, the movie can be shocking if just seen without spoilers, but there is enough deaths in this film! This moves to an airplane flight where a passenger has demand about what is served to the flight attendant, Kelly (Hannah Aline). They are interrupted by another passenger who has wakened. The doctor (Steve Coulter) calms him down and has him lie down, only to stab him in the neck with a pen!
It is of course shocking, the passenger unexpectedly wakes up, but there should be a sedative, but then we won’t get the gore. The passenger is still alive so the woman takes care of him with her high heel! This shifts to a stream bank where we get a young woman (Emma Roberts) who wakes up with a silicone mouth gag like something out of bdsm. Roberts is recognizable from American Horror Story and she was also in Scream 4 (2011). She finds that others also have mouth gags and sees another woman (Betty Gilpin) at the stream. Gilpin is recognizable as Debbie Eagan in GLOW, but she is also in the action comedy Stuber (2019). They find in the middle of a field, a large wooden crate, a crowbar, very Hunger Games. A man uses the crowbar to open the crate while the others take cover in the woods. They find a dressed-up pig scramble out, which should be a warning, and a red display filled with weapons. The color symbolism, noted in the special features of the movie, becomes evident.
While the others arm themselves, the woman finds keys on the other side of the crate door, she works with a young man (Justin Hartley) to open the mouth gags. Hartley is known for This is Us and I recognized him immediately as Green Arrow in Smallville. The woman, identified as Yoga Pants in the credits, is killed. It is clear from that point that we shouldn’t focus on a character as our protagonist, in fact, this ties into the theme that people should not identify with a person so easily. In effect, identifying the characters would be spoilers! They of course are hunted as part of “The Most Dangerous Game” scenario. The short story by Richard Connell published in 1924 by features a big game hunter finding a human as prey. The film is not a simple expansion of that concept. It explores our biases through a political lens, we have the prey as ultra-conservatives and later, the hunters as ultra-liberals. The controversy of some kind of strange revenge fantasy is incorrect. Both sides are parodied. This is of course mixed with some gruesome deaths!
The young man sees another woman run for the woods and then fall. He finds that she has fallen in a pit trap and helps her pull free from the spikes that have pierced her mid-section. The kindness shown to other characters is supposed to evoke sympathy in the audience so we think the person may be a protagonist. He helps her to the woods, but then finds that he has stepped on a land mine! The explosion tosses the woman back into the pit trap! She pleads for another person to shoot her and uses his gun on herself. This leads to the survivors to continue through the forest to a fence. This is where we find a man (Ike Barinholtz), called Staten Island in the credits, by this time we already know the perspective shifting. We find him trying to help others over the fence to a road. The last one is a man with the unfortunate name of Target (Chris Barry). He is struck by several arrows and tries to return through the forest. Target falls and a grenade is thrown at him. It is a dummy so the killers toss another grenade. There are three survivors, Vanilla Nice (Sturgill Simpson) and Big Red (Kate Nowlin) who make their way to a general store.
Staten Island tries to understand with the others where they are from the owners, Ma (Amy Madigan) and Pa (Reed Birney). This is a seemingly friendly Mid-Western couple who smile and tell them there are Arkansas. Instead, they are some of the participants of The Hunt. So the trio are not fated to survive. Finally, we get the woman played by Betty Gilpin, who is in an orange jacket, walk into the general store. She asks Ma for a pack of cigarettes and becomes suspicious. The woman lashes out at Ma and Pa, checks out a car and finds it is trapped. The wisdom of this woman and that she isn’t interested in why she is thrown in this situation is where we finally get that she’s our protagonist. The protagonist is icy, not driven to emotion and questioning, which is why we find she’s a survivor. She sees a drone sent to the general store and listens to a walkie talkie to the reports. The drone is shot by a man named Gary (Ethan Suplee). He is a conspiracy theorist spouting all sorts of ideas why they are there, something he calls Manorgate, but the protagonist is not interested. We later get the other members of The Hunt including their trainer, Sgt. Dale (Steve Mokate). Named after military consultant Dale Dye? It is assumed that the Hunt members have been hunting for some time, but this is not the case. If so, there should be mention of some practice victims. Ultimately, it leads to a confrontation with Betty Gilpin’s character and a character played by Hilary Swank, spoiled by the DVD cover! The Hunt is more that it seems, a bit weak in script, but is a satiric, violent thriller!
Three Keys out of Five!
#TheHunt, #CraigZobel, #NickCuse, #DamonLindelof, #BettyGilpin
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