Quick show of hands—who here remembers the tsunami of rage late last year about a little B-movie called “The Hunt”?
The film, which was to be released in September, was shelved by Universal Pictures after the far-right conservative machine went bonkers, resulting in a relentless, overly dramatic pearl-clutching fit that dominated prime-time talk TV.
Why the uproar?
Because “The Hunt,” directed by Craig Zobel and written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, is a political satire about liberals who hunt conservatives for sport.
The Hunt
1 out of 5 stars.
Rated: R
Run Time: 89 minutes
Directed by Craig Zobel
Starring Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Wayne Duvall, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts, Amy Madigan and more
On paper, at least, “The Hunt” sounded like a down-and-dirty update of “The Most Dangerous Game” with some topical political commentary thrown in to highlight the epic tenor of discord that now exists between Republicans and Democrats.
Plus, the pedigree of the people behind the camera was pretty damn good. Zobel previously helmed the gut-punch thriller “Compliance,” and Cuse and Lindelof just finished HBO’s “Watchmen,” which may be the best, most intelligently written television show I’ve ever seen.
Now, six months later, the studio is trying to stoke anticipation by focusing on the controversy: “The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen.”
Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that none of that — not a talented up-and-coming director, two visionary writers or a well-designed promotional push — means shit once you actually watch “The Hunt.”
“The Hunt” makes Jean-Claude Van Damme’s ridiculously cheesy “Hard Target” look like the greatest humans-hunting-humans B-movie ever made.
“The Hunt” is little more than a collection of far-right and far-left hot-button topics reduced to glib asides and sarcastic put-downs.
Right out of the gate, one liberal character gloats about “slaughtering a bunch of deplorables.” Later, three stereotypical conservative characters crow about their right to own a home arsenal because of Stand Your Ground and the Second Amendment.
Another liberal character feels bad after discovering a conservative she just shot in cold blood is wearing a wedding ring.
“He’s a monster,” her husband says to console her. “He probably uses the N-word on a regular basis, even in public.”
A conservative podcaster very much designed to look like Alex Jones scoffs when he encounters a group of displaced immigrants. “They’re crisis actors!” he shouts.
A group of would-be liberal assassins in a fancy foxhole-bunker beam about social media — “Oh wow, Ava DuVernay liked one of my tweets!” — while the lone female in the group grouses about a male colleague.
“Did you say, ‘guys’?” she snaps.
“Sorry, I gendered it,” he responds.
I seriously kept waiting for a sequence where either a conservative or liberal screamed “Benghazi” before gutting someone with a pointy stick.
What’s really missing from “The Hunt” is any semblance of intelligence.
Sure, the movie does a respectable job of evenly balancing the shade cast at both sides. All the conservatives come off like Neanderthal brutes. And all the liberals look like pretentious idiots.
But there’s zero explanation given for how a small band of truth warriors came up with the capital, not to mention the top-secret infrastructure, to build a kill-zone in Croatia, of all places.
There’s zero depth assigned to any of the characters, including the lead conservative, Crystal (Betty Gilpin), or the liberal architect of the carnage, Athena (Hilary Swank). Everybody plays a stereotype, whether it’s a redneck, a military veteran or an environmental activist.
It’s actually impossible to tell who the audience is supposed to be rooting for. Crystal is a wholly unlikeable character, yet she’s the focal point. Athena is so thinly sketched you have to wonder what kind of dirt someone had on Swank, an Oscar winner, to convince her to take the part.
There’s just such a void of basic narrative building blocks that it boggles the mind, especially given that Universal had an additional half-year to fine-tune this thing into a crowd-pleasing winner.
The only thing that works in “The Hunt” is the wholesale carnage. Seriously, the degree of gratuitous gore on display is staggering, not to mention unexpected.
Bodies get blown to bits, cleaved in half or skewered by arrows. Eyeballs are forcibly ripped out. Heads explode in a chunky, crimson spray from close-range shotgun blasts.
Is that enough to recommend anyone actually pay to watch “The Hunt”?
No.
Hell, no.
Abso-fucking-lutely not.
The only reason anyone should ever be forced to watch “The Hunt” is if they’re being tortured by an operative with opposing political views.
And really, at that point, why not just turn on Fox News or MSNBC instead?
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
This article appears in Mar 12-19, 2020.