Movie Review: The Hunt

The Hunt *** / *****
Directed by: Craig Zobel.
Written by: Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof.
Starring: Betty Gilpin (Crystal), Hilary Swank (Athena), Ike Barinholtz (Staten Island), Wayne Duvall (Don), Ethan Suplee (Shut the F**k Up) Gary), Emma Roberts (Yoga Pants), Chris Berry (Target), Sturgill Simpson (Vanilla Nice), Kate Nowlin (Big Red), Amy Madigan (Ma), Reed Birney (Pop), Glenn Howerton (Richard), Steve Coulter (The Doctor), Dean J. West (Martin), Vince Pisani (Peter), Teri Wyble (Liberty), Steve Mokate (Sgt. Dale), Sylvia Grace Crim (Dead Sexy), Jason Kirkpatrick (Rannnndeeee), Macon Blair (Fauxnvoy), J.C. MacKenzie (Paul), Tadasay Young (Nicole), Hannah Alline (Flight Attendant / Not Stewardess / Kelly), Jim Klock (Captain O'Hara), Usman Ally (Crisis Mike).

Ironically, The Hunt would have been easier to dismiss as a too on the nose satire of the “way we live now” had the film just come and gone rather quickly last fall like it was supposed to. The film’s satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face – as it is about the dangers of dehumanization in America’s current cultural debate – whether people are either braindead rednecks who blindly support an idiot like Donald Trump, or liberal snowflakes who are too overly sensitive about everything. The movie isn’t saying anything particularly revelatory, and many (most) may complain that it’s the definition of “both sides-ism” that paints everyone with the same brush, even if one side is so much worse than the other. Yet, strangely, the fact that the film got caught up in a maelstrom of controversy – led by Trump, who saw nothing but a basic premise, and declared it liberal hogwash – a blood soaked fantasy that proved that the “they” were the real villains – and found so many people willing to go along and decry it, that Craig Zobel’s blunt instrument of a film somehow does feel like the “film we need now” – because it turns out our society is even dumber than we thought it was.

 The premise of the movie is simple – a bunch of NPR listening liberals kidnap a bunch of Trump supporting, climate change denying idiots, and then basically hunt them for sport. It starts when those NPR listening liberals get themselves in trouble – when a supposed private text chain goes public – full of horrible things written about the President which gets them all fired. So the liberals, led by Athena (Hilary Swank) decide to make one of those right-wing nutjob conspiracy theories come true – shipping these redneck to a manor house, where they will be picked off one by one. They do give them a fighting chance – as they all start to come out of their drug induced stupor, they find a huge cache of weapons – although they also open fire on them before they’ve really had a chance to orient themselves. Many die right then and there – but a few escape.

The main character in the film is Crystal played wonderfully by Betty Gilpin in a performance that basically saves the movie. She is smart and tough – knows how to use a gun, and defend herself in many other ways – and can spot a trap a mile away. They idiots she is stuck with on her team though have no real idea what’s going on, or why. She’s basically going to have to kill her way to freedom all by herself.

The Hunt is an odd movie in many ways. The first act seems to set up the rules of the game – the rules for the hunt itself, and then it basically abandons them – to focus on Crystal, the one character who doesn’t seem like a stereotype of either the left or right. She barely seems to care about this divide at all – which is probably sensible given that one side is trying to kill her, and the other side isn’t. But she remains, to the end, a political enigma, perhaps a centrist, or perhaps just someone who is too busy with her own life to worry too much about the culture wars. As she is also the one character in the film who isn’t a complete stereotype, the movie seems to be suggesting that she’s the one to emulate. It’s more than a little ironic in a film about how both sides dehumanize each other, that basically everyone else in the film never become more than that what the other side thinks they are – and it’s really there where the film fails to live up to its premise. Like the original The Purge, there is a better movie lurking somewhere in here than the filmmakers decided to make. The Purge got decidedly more political as the series went on – more ambitious, with a wider scope. I doubt The Hunt will get that chance.

As pure schlock though, The Hunt pretty much works. From that opening melee – with some pretty major actors getting wiped out before they get a chance to utter more than a few words, with heads exploding, blood splattering, people falling on spikes, etc., it’s a gory blast. The movie slows down a little in the following scene – the best in the movie not to include Gilpin – as a couple of the people who escaped come across a mom and pop store and desperately try and get help. From then on, Crystal is our guide – and even as the film offers too many twists and turns for its own good, she keeps things lively. It all ends with the kind of extended, hand-to-hand combat sequence between one of TV’s best actresses (Gilpin has been the biggest reason to keep up with Glow) and a two-time-Oscar winner, slumming it in a cheap exploitation film.

Zobel is capable of better than The Hunt – I loved his breakthrough Compliance a few years ago, for which Ann Dowd should have won an Oscar. Here, like everyone else involved, it’s lowering himself to the material – but having so much fun with it it’s hard to complain. The Hunt isn’t a deep satire – it isn’t really to be. And if the goal ultimately was to get people to see people on the other side as more than just stereotypes, well then, the film fails miserably. Perhaps though this dim-witted satire is the film America needs right now – if only because it proves that nothing is too dumb to take a stand on.