Directed by:
Craig ZobelCinematography:
Darran TiernanComposer:
Nathan BarrCast:
Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Wayne Duvall, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts, Christopher Berry, Sturgill Simpson, Kate Nowlin, Amy Madigan (more)VOD (2)
Plots(1)
Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don’t know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they’ve been chosen… for a very specific purpose… The Hunt. In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, a group of elites gathers for the very first time at a remote Manor House to hunt ordinary Americans for sport. But the elites’ master plan is about to be derailed because one of The Hunted, Crystal, knows The Hunters’ game better than they do. She turns the tables on the killers, picking them off, one by one, as she makes her way toward the mysterious woman at the center of it all. (Universal Pictures US)
(more)Videos (9)
Reviews (12)
We've already had manhunting as a "hobby for the elite", but The Hunt takes this theme from a slightly different perspective. The film offers plenty of black-humour scenes and a pretty solid unpredictability – you really don't know who will die, when and how, which is a big plus. On the whole, I was bothered by the passages with too much talking that unnecessarily stretched out the running time. The Hunt is one of those films where I can understand any rating. Otherwise, Betty Gilpin pushed the envelope a little too hard at times with her bad-ass-look, whatever.
()
I'm pretty convinced that the scariest word of the 21st century will be 'satire'. There are bad scripts, and then there are scripts that are also bad but try to convince us that they are not by pointing out how aware they are of the genre rules they are not afraid to knowingly break. When you then combine this insufferable arrogance with an ironic statement about contemporary society, you'd have to be a real genius to get anything out of it other than a painfully spasmodic rant where even the script must have been written on Twitter, complete with hashtags. And it's probably not worth mentioning that Zobel is no genius. Aside from the final, surprisingly well done and distinctive fight scenes, it's mind-numbingly boringly shot in a typical Blumhouse production where everyone is wearing clean pressed clothes, the set is full of obviously artificial objects, and when he tries to shock, he does it with the aid of laughably digital blood. Lindelof is a filmmaker who based his entire screenwriting career on trying to emulate Joss Whedon, the king of bullshit genre self-reflections (God how I hate them), but didn't have enough talent to pull it off. Now he's just trying to make a buck off of the social and cultural internet wars, where he's trying to prove his ability to balance on a spectrum of opinion that’s pathetic. Plus, when you subtract the context from the film, notice how each scene is completely nonsensically constructed, how people behave in it, and what moves the plot along. This movie is sloppy AF. Too bad for Betty Gilpin, who the whole time gives the impression of either not being able to believe what just came out of her mouth or that somebody else is strung up in her face. She's actually quite funny when it comes to that. Like, for real.
()
So it seems that in 2020, the number one public enemy for the American people is not international terrorism, communism, crime, or a pandemic, it's political satire! It was clear from the beginning that the "big controversy" about The Hunt was just an exaggerated issue in a global context. The context is a profound political divide between the American left and right, and a significant percentage of Americans feel deeply moved by the mild spring breeze that was tickling their bottoms. After all, The Hunt is just a satirical action movie that indiscriminately wades into many political streams, without seemingly offering anything new, such as the series South Park which has been shouting about issues regularly for the last 15 years. Obviously, the problem is when political satire is presented quite so literally in a relatively big movie. The Hunt has already based a promotional campaign on this controversy after the not inconsiderable postponement of the premiere. At times it's an apt and humorous spectacle, and at other times it's quite unfocused and looks to be overcompensating for something. However, in the end, it's an action movie that tries it's hardest to surprise you and it's certainly not boring and it wouldn't hurt to see it.
()
I have no idea why horror is listed as one of the film's genres. Black comedy fits much better. Anyway, I had fun while wading through all that blood, and I don't care what it says about me. After all, when the Americans are able to make fun of all their taboo topics once every ten years, I’m ecstatic about how different it is from the constantly celebrated patriotism, riding on a giant wave of pathos. What's more, I loved Crystal’s approach, and I still have to think about how frustrating it must be when you're talking to someone whose head (or at least a substantial part of it) is gone all of a sudden. The film definitely deserves to have a higher rating.
()
I hate movies where the director sits there in awe and says that everyone on the screen is a moron and that's why we're going to laugh at them. This isn't smart satire, it's the movie version of a Facebook discussion with conservatives and liberals arguing; all the smart people have left and now someone comes along and feels they have to tell the rest they're morons. By the way, besides the final fight, it's pretty uninteresting.
()
Ads