A from-the-headlines satire that plays it so broad as to be ineffective, the red vs. blue culture war comedy-thriller The Hunt isn’t funny or exciting enough to be successful at either. The self-described “most controversial movie of the year” says nothing we don’t already know from four years of living through American sociopolitical polarization – yet beats this obvious drum for 90 labored minutes.
Delayed from 2018 apparently due to studio concerns the perception might be one of glorifying gun violence in the wake of mass shootings, Craig Zobel’s picture shares the DNA of films like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale in its survive-to-the-death games between random private citizens, all orchestrated – as usual – by a mad puppeteer with a diabolical grand plan.
This isn’t a partisan film, rather an equal opportunity critique of both liberal and conservative dumbbells, studio fear seeming misplaced in a movie less about exploitative cruelty and more about stoking already tenuous divisions between right-wing conspiracy theorists and do-gooder libs. Yet it isn’t deep or thoughtful enough to provoke enough debate.
It takes a while to discern exactly what’s happening, but (spoilers) it goes something like this: wealthy liberal elites congregating on the dark web hatch a plan to kidnap working-class conservatives, dropping them into dog-eat-dog survival game thereby forcing them to eliminate each other. The survival games are sport for their secret cabal and a way to rid themselves of “deplorables.” Insufferable ivy tower types hunting down exaggerated rednecks? How about that for zeitgeist? Right. Got it.
Picture’s lead is former Afghanistan vet Crystal (Betty Gilpin, terrific) who, like the 11 other players, is drugged and flown to a secret locale before waking up disoriented, smack in the middle of a field, under fire from a unseen enemy. Right away, the bloodletting betrays the humor – too much of one, not enough of the other – and the movie struggles to establish an effective tone. Here is a film where, at any moment, an explosion of violence might occur, and boy does it ever, frequently with comically gory effects.
At times sharply directed action courtesy of director Zobel (Compliance) The Hunt is filled with sniggering, on-the-nose (deliberate) caricatures, the kind which Jordan Peele eschewed in his richly observant Get Out, which posited eerily supportive, benevolent liberals as orchestrators of a similarly demonic brand of social engineering. That picture dared to suggest that racism lurked in the hearts of far left, Obama-era liberals from the tony suburbs, a novel assertion that danger is everywhere, even in otherwise safe company.
By contrast, The Hunt presents an obvious, cartoon vision of broad stereotypes that exist to push opposing factions into their expected and respective corners right up to its final showdown, which offers one minor surprise revelation yet nothing in the way of piquant social comedy in its vision of a gleefully bloody, tables turned ideological showdown.
Crystal is hunted by assassins lurking everywhere until eventually unraveling the game and making her way to its designer, Athena (Hilary Swank). At this point the picture either improves (because Swank is such a pro) or devolves, depending on your tolerance for its overwritten, heavy-handed How We Live Now explanation of everything above.
Swank, admittedly the best part of this mess, delivers a load of sociopolitical mumbo-jumbo that even a two-time Best Actress Oscar winner, slumming through such a trite B-movie, could effectively sell, try as she might.
2 stars.
