Review: The Hunt
Blumhouse Productions’ The Hunt was at the center of controversy in August of last year when its plot was criticized—leftists hunt right-wingers for sport. It was deemed immediately inappropriate by some, including the President of the United States, and it was swiftly put on the shelf with no word on when, if ever, it would be released. Then, in February, the movie had a release date once again, plus a daring, new ad campaign with it; The Hunt embraced the controversy, selling itself as a dangerous movie that “no one has seen” yet. With the movie now out, the question is, did it warrant all the controversy to begin with? Well, not really. It’s nowhere near as incendiary as it claims to be in its advertising. Honestly, I don’t think the movie itself thinks it’s as daring, either—director Craig Zobel, along with writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, go for more of a gore-filled comic satire than grand political message.
The movie opens up with inserts of a text message group, joking about “deplorables” and hunting them down at “the manor.” We then jump immediately into “the hunt”—a group of seemingly random people wake up, are shot at and chased through a boobytrapped countryside. Here, The Hunt peaks; it never really returns to the extreme violent delight we see in this first sequence. Heads get blown off, bodies are grenade’d in half, and arrows pierce through torsos—in terms of midnight movie fare, The Hunt excels in these exploitative moments of mayhem. The movie shows its true face, this is more screwball horror than anything else. Once the movie starts to slow down, as a necessity its political statement starts creeping in, in a very sloppy way.
Betty Gilpin is the bright and shining star of The Hunt. No matter how you feel about the ham-fisted soundbits and references, like “don’t First Amendment me,” “white people are the worst,” and “I’m friends with Ava DuVernay,” Gilpin, as ex-military badass psycho killer hero, and a member of the hunted, Crystal, gives one hell of a performance, essentially carrying the movie as an action superstar until the very end. She’s physically adept at kicking the crap out of the bad guys—the years of Gilpin training on her show GLOW certainly comes in handy. The only vulnerability she shows is buried deep behind the facial tics and odd noises she makes when put into an awkward spot. She holds her own against the hunters, a group of broad-stroke liberal elite caricatures, and the woman in charge of the hunt, Athena (Hilary Swank).
Yes, a group of rich, left-leaning progressives hunt a group of right-wing, conservatives; while it’s mean at times, it’s never not tongue-in-cheek. The rich hunters drink thousand dollar bottles of wine, while the hunted are Southern, red hat-wearing, gun-loving nuts. Nuance isn’t on The Hunt’s mind. Moreso, there’s a more plot-driven, less radical reason for the actual hunt, one that coincidentally becomes a meta text equivalent: “don’t judge a book by its cover…” Athena doesn’t just want to kill these “deplorables,” it’s all just a path to revenge, over a rumor that was blown out of proportion and led to her being “canceled,” involving a social media dust-up too, no less. The Hunt’s real-life controversy and months’ long delay is reflected in its central plot, which ends up making the movie more interesting despite itself—”the hunt” isn’t what you think it is, but it also is… and isn’t. On its own, it’s a fun and sometimes clever action satire. It’s also a shaggy dog of a true political movie, swinging for over-generalizations and muddled messaging, pointing the fingers at everyone and no one. But that’s okay; as a flash-in-the-pan, movie-of-the-moment The Hunt is a fine way to spend your night, but, don’t count on it aging very well. Like the political climate of right now, things change rapidly, and we’ll all quickly turn our attention to something new.
