Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 49 minutes
Director: Craig Zobel
Quick Impressions:
Apparently this is a horror movie. I know I was absolutely terrified while watching, worried I had killed my parents by risking a trip to the movie theater. So much has changed since earlier in the week when we bought the tickets.
Ever since my daughter had a rocky start and spent months in the NICU, I’ve been a huge germaphobe. For a while, I was essentially agoraphobic, but more recently I’ve been slightly braver, risking normal life, but still avoiding other humans whenever possible, washing my hands thoroughly, pinpointing the origin of every rogue cough, and ritually bathing in hand sanitizer (less to kill the germs than to take magical action to cope with the fear). And now the world is reflecting my always present interior terror back at me, and let me tell you, I don’t like it.
Chances are, everything here in Central Texas will be closed down next week. Even if it isn’t, I’ll be closed down, at home, trying not to catch COVID-19 through frivolous pursuits. (And forget about taking our kids to Onward this weekend!) So this may be the last movie I review for a while. I had extreme doubts about risking even this one. I got even more nervous when we arrived to find the theater staff (including the manager) power cleaning everything. Apparently this is meant to reassure patrons. (To me it always plants a seed of worry. Did somebody throw up? That’s the normal reason for excessive cleaning.)
Only about eight people shared the auditorium with us, but when one of them violently sneezed, my chest tightened and I became just as hyper-vigilant as I was watching Joker. Then we got home and received an email from the theater. I died. “They’re letting us know we’ve been exposed to corona virus!” I thought. No, they just want to reassure us that they’re manically cleaning everything. (Yes, I noticed.) I’m pretty sure they just don’t want us to drop out of their loyalty program. (And why would we? Unused free tickets roll over!)
At any rate, I’m glad we risked going out to see The Hunt because I liked it much more than I expected. (Obviously if my entire family later dies because I went to the movie theater, I will revise my opinion.) (I’m not being flippant. I’m actually deeply concerned. My father lives with us and has had two liver transplants.) (My chest keeps feeling tight but I have to remind myself that I went kite-flying today.)
The Good:
I didn’t expect much from this movie. I went because it looked more upbeat than the maudlin Ben Affleck by-the-numbers basketball drama and less dumb than Bloodshot. (I hope those descriptions aren’t too insulting. I seriously considered both of those options.)
Actually, the trailer for The Hunt is what sold me. I’m not a horror fan, so this movie hasn’t been on my radar at all. But it looked like a manic mash-up of “The Most Dangerous Game,” and Hilary Swank’s audition to play a Bond villain. Plus there was a random pig (who was adorable), and this tagline, “The Most Talked About Movie of the Year is One That No One’s Actually Seen.”
I liked the audacity of that. “Since when is this the most talked about movie of the year?” I wondered aloud to my husband. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of it, and it comes out in a week!”
He assured me that The Hunt had generated a lot of controversy, that many outspoken Trump supporters had protested that it was a film that took glee in dragging people like them through the mud and outright plugged hunting them for sport. (It does make them look bad, but, to be fair, the people hunting them look even worse!). That explains why I hadn’t heard much about it. My dad is an avid Fox News viewer, and I can’t stand the controversy, so I deliberately avoid all TV infotainment as much as possible. I prefer to read the news in print or on a personal handheld device.
At any rate, this film is actually a lot of fun. I have a hard time believing it could truly offend anyone who watches it–unless you’re offended by lazy jokes and recycled plot elements.
Imagine you’re someone from another country trying to learn what America is like by watching our “news” shows and reading comments online. Surely research like that would leave you with the impression that all Americans are extremist idiots who cling to one of two equally ridiculous, opposing ideologies. Plus you would assume that we all love guns and (if given the opportunity) would get a kick out of hunting each other for sport. (Clearly, in such a scenario, the conservative extremists are thrilled by the guns, and the liberal extremists are getting off on the irony of guns destroying gun lovers.)
So what we get in this movie is not a realistic look at real conservatives versus real liberals. It’s more like a battle of the strawmen–the liberal snowflakes the conservatives imagine versus the conservative deplorables of liberal nightmares. (By the way, I’m using “conservative” versus “liberal” as shorthand because I think people know which two extremes I mean. Obviously those terms are imprecise and can refer to a wide range of people and ideologies. But you’ll recognize the familiar steorotypes here from internet memes and comment sections. The two polarized groups are easy to delineate.)
I love the film’s psycho method of introducing us to our protagonist. This actually is brilliant, maybe not exactly original at this point, but unexpected and lots of fun.
Before going, I had heard the female lead was a star on the rise. Watching, I thought, “Wow, she looks just like Emma Roberts!” Yeah, turns out that was Emma Roberts. The rising star is actually Betty Gilpin, and I loved her performance. In fact, she makes the movie. Without her, this would seem like a dumber, gorier version of The Hunger Games.
For a while, the movie does seem a bit like The Hunger Games, and I wondered how they would sustain the tension. Thankfully, fairly soon, the movie switches things up a bit.
Best Scene:
I could watch Crystal’s gripping retelling of “The Tortoise and the Hair” endlessly. Gilpin really sells this story, and Wayne Duvall as Don??? does his part to make the scene exceptional, too. (I love the characters’ names in this, by the way. The cast list in the end credits is just as entertaining as anything else in the movie.) I think I would watch an entire series called The Jackrabbit Always Wins (or maybe just The Jackrabbit) starring Betty Gilpin. She really sells that story. Kudos to screenwriters Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, too. That story is my single biggest takeaway from the movie. I think back to high school when I needed dramatic monologues for competitions and auditions. I would love to take a crack at telling that story. (And for a story by Damon Lindelof, it has a surprisingly unambiguous ending!)
Runner up best scene is a moment near the train, one of the few times (after that early sequence) that The Hunt genuinely surprised me.
Best Action Sequence:
Literally 100 percent of the loose ends and potential plot holes in this film can be resolved with these four simple magic words: Hilary Swank is crazy.
This is actually a very fun part for Hilary Swank. She’s been acting a long time. I’m sure she has a diverse filmography. But I usually see her in intense, depressing Oscar-baity (and often winning) dramas. (Even The Black Dahlia got a cinematography nomination.)
She’s so great in this. It works well that we don’t see her face or learn her motivations until the final act. (I think it’s okay to mention her in the review, though, because she’s heavily featured in the trailer. At least, that’s what I remembered from the trailer–Hilary Swank and a pig.)
I found Swank’s character almost shockingly sympathetic, yet, obviously, dangerously unhinged. To me, that’s one of two jokes in the script that actually lands, that sense of, “That’s just ridiculous! Look how absurd you’re being! Look! I’ll show you!” (The other genuinely funny joke is Don???’s reaction to Crystal’s story.)
In most cases the film’s stab at pointed satire falls flat, but here, the one big “joke” driving the entire movie actually does work. It’s very funny. It also feels alarmingly possible, like it might be true. Maybe The Hunt is less satirical horror than cautionary tale. (I’m not saying that liberals will start hunting conservatives for sport. I’m saying that this pervasive feeling of pent up outrage and resentment might boil over into something ugly and dangerous that hurts everyone, regardless of world view.)
Already we see that calling each other names on the internet and forwarding reductive views of our neighbors has not done anyone the slightest bit of good.
Why am I blathering about all this under the heading “Best Action Sequence”? Well, I love the big fight scene at the end. That’s why.
Best Scene Visually:
That psycho Hunger Games scene early on is pretty inventive visually.
The Negatives:
The satire in the film could be sharper, riskier, more subtle, and more biting. The Hunt goes for low-hanging fruit. Imagine the dumbest, most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard from either side, and you’re sure to hear it again in this movie.
I’m also not sure why Trump supporters were so outraged by this film (assuming they actually were). If anything, I think the movie is tougher on the liberals. I have actually heard real humans say almost everything the hunted say, but some of the stuff their hunters say is really only expressed that way by conservatives ventriloquizing and mocking liberal views (and by Joaquin Phoenix). For the most part, this reads as gentle, silly self-mockery from a liberal viewpoint.
Perhaps one thing that makes the movie feel slightly unbalanced is that (with the exception of Hilary Swank) the hunted are almost always better actors, more convincing in their roles.
I kind of like the ridiculous extremity of both sides, though, because Crystal pretty clearly belongs to neither side. She is more like a real American (rather than an imagined strawman boogeyman). She is easy to root for because she remembers Teddy Roosevelt’s advice. She strategically arms herself and keeps her mouth shut, a good reminder that in difficult times, wise actions help more than heated words.
Of the two questions posed at the end of the movie, only one of them appears definitively answered. (I think deep inside, the entire audience must know this one revealed truth much earlier.) As for the other question, I think the answer doesn’t matter. Crystal makes the most prudent choice given the situation. I do wish we had a more definitive answer there, though.
Overall: