ReviewThe Hunt film review: violent political fable proves little more than casual exploitation
- When 12 strangers wake up in a clearing, they don’t know where they are – or how they got there. Soon they realise they are being hunted for sport
- The film’s premise is about the rich-poor divide and Trump-era America, but it’s built on flimsy ideas with random violence thrown in
2.5/5 stars
Temporarily shelved last year following cases of mass shootings in the United States, The Hunt comes with a fine pedigree, given it’s from the Blumhouse stable that brought us such profitable, provocative horrors as Get Out , The Purge and, most recently, The Invisible Man .
The film is also co-written by Damon Lindelof, the co-creator of Lost, and Nick Cuse, a producer and writer on the recent Watchmen TV series. But this bloody tale of human sport isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is.
The story begins as a dozen disparate people from all over the US wake up after being drugged and kidnapped. Gagged and in the middle of a field in god-knows-where, they find a wooden crate. Inside it is a pig, named “Orwell” we later discover in one of several references to the writer’s classic Animal Farm. Also it contains a cache of weapons.
Before you can say “Battle Royale”, these lambs to the slaughter are being, well, slaughtered. Emma Roberts, one of the more known stars in the cast, is gruesomely shot in the head in a matter of seconds. Another poor soul lands on a spike, then gets her legs blown off. Grenades and booby traps let fly. It’s gory, but cartoonish with it.
Who is hunting these individuals and why? All will be revealed, but not before several make an escape to a Ma & Pa gas station, where the genial owners are not what they seem. “Everyone is lying,” says Crystal (Glow star Betty Gilpin), a blonde car rental employee from Mississippi who by default gradually becomes our central character.