Review: The Hunt (2020)

The Hunt (2020)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout

Score: 3 out of 5

As a political satire about the polarization of modern America, The Hunt is limp, especially given all that was written about it last summer when its release date was pushed back. Its social commentary felt like the worst elements of South Park stretched out to feature length, willing to stand against everything but not necessarily for anything. But as a gonzo, balls-out, take-no-prisoners action thriller, it's easily in the upper tier of such films to come out within recent memory. When it got down to being an action flick, it knocked my socks off with a slew of brutal sequences and a sense of humor that only added to its popcorn thrills, all of it anchored by a lead performance from Betty Gilpin that, in a just world, would establish her as an action hero in the making. For all its pretensions about having Something to Say, The Hunt is ironically a film where it's best to just turn your brain off at the door, because when you do, you will have a very good time watching it.

The basic plot is a twist on Richard Connell's short story "The Most Dangerous Game", more or less: a group of strangers are kidnapped and dumped in the middle of the woods, where they are ruthlessly hunted down by a group of depraved rich people. The twist here is political: the rich people, led by Hilary Swank as Athena Stone, are specifically liberal elites who targeted their victims for their right-wing political leanings. This forms the core of the film's action, in which hateful caricatures of both rich corporate liberals and loutish "deplorables" spend the film trying to kill each other, with neither side coming off well in the process. The hunters are neurotic, politically correct to a fault, and obviously hypocritical, the hunted are often ragingly bigoted, buy into self-destructive conspiracy theories, and cause many of their own problems, and both sides are judgmental and don't know how to communicate with the other side instead of shouting over one another, which turns out to be a major reason why the plot got underway in the first place. Much of the film's comedy, a lot of which is genuinely funny, flows from letting these caricatures play off of one another. One of my favorite moments came early on, when an attempt by three of the hunted to hide out in a rest stop staffed by two hunters posing as a kindly, conservative elderly couple goes awry when the de facto leader of the group starts ranting and raving about his Second Amendment rights, at which point the audience is probably primed to cheer on these two NPR-listening latte liberal hunters as they exercise their Second Amendment rights -- before they proceed to destroy our sympathy by playing up all manner of awful bourgeois bohemian stereotypes, at which point the film's real protagonist Crystal arrives to show them what's up.

And had the film actually followed through on its stance against political extremism in either direction, it might have had some bite. Unfortunately, a number of late-in-the-game plot twists ultimately cause the film to chicken out after spending ninety minutes being as in-your-face as possible in delivering its message. Without spoiling anything, it attempts to frame our heroine Crystal as being above it all, somebody who stands apart from the worst qualities of the other deplorables by refusing to voice their worst opinions and conspiracy theories, and who is clearly meant to be the audience stand-in, the one character who truly deserves to live. It is here where the film fails as satire and ironically falls victim to the very thing that it condemns, refusing to turn its mirror on its audience and instead patting them on the back for not being "those people" who rant and rave online. The film had both its head and its heart in the right place, but ultimately, it didn't have the guts to actually criticize its viewers.

A sharper version of this story would not have given viewers a character who they could so obviously root for to win against the bad guys. Instead, both Athena and Crystal would have had shades of gray, enough to make anybody understand why these two did what they did -- Athena as somebody who was genuinely hurt both emotionally and financially by the things that had been done to her by the right-wing hate machine to the point where she truly wanted to murder them, and Crystal as somebody who was also at the end of her rope and sick and tired of being mistreated and looked down on by elitist limousine liberals (to the point of being, say, passed over for a cushy job), such that she embraced an utterly vile worldview in response. (And give Athena more screen time so that she can fill the role of the "counter-protagonist" and a co-audience viewpoint character with Crystal.) They both should've been the two worst people in the film, but at the same time, they both should've had clear motive for their awfulness. Their final confrontation should've been plainly depicted as the culmination of their misplaced tribalism and hatred for one another, a match that you're hoping to see dragged out because you want the both of them to suffer, culminating in the two of them bleeding out on the ground, their final words being them asking each other where it all went wrong. Instead, we only get one half of this with Athena. Making Crystal an unambiguous hero, alone within the cast, felt like a cop-out on the film's satirical message, one that meant that audiences didn't have to root for any of the film's awful characters and start wondering about themselves, what they would do, and who they were cheering on. Even a version of this story that was just pure "red meat" for either conservatives or liberals wanting to watch the other side get literally OWNED and DESTROYED would've been preferable to the tepid messaging the film ultimately settles on. (Compare this to, say, last year's remake of Black Christmas, or any of the sequels to The Purge, all of which are fellow Blumhouse productions. Those films are astonishingly blunt in their politics, but their refusal to make any bones about that fact lent them a refreshing honesty that this film lacked.)

Like I said, this is a film where turning on, tuning in, and dropping out is really the best way to get the most out of it. Because, for all that Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof's screenplay fails when it comes to satire, Craig Zobel's direction succeeds when it comes to delivering kick-ass action scenes. The film starts strong with the good kind of fake-out, an absolute bloodbath in which we watch loads of people, many of them played by recognizable B-movie actors like Emma Roberts and Ike Barinholtz, getting splattered. The action scenes are shot with aplomb, the film laying out very early on that Crystal is a combat veteran and then showing us her using all those Army skills to take down anybody who gets in her path. It would not have been possible without Betty Gilpin, an actress who, from the moment the story started focusing on her character, had me by the balls. I've seen her honestly compared by at least one other critic to Kurt Russell in Escape from New York or Bruce Campbell in Evil Dead II for the near-instantaneous impact she left, taking what could've easily been a flat and generic "tough chick" archetype and making her unforgettable the moment she started speaking. Her very first one-liner may just be the most badass moment I've seen from an action hero in the last ten years this side of the John Wick films or Mad Max: Fury Road, one that's likely to go down with Ash Williams "groovy!" in the pantheon of such. Physically, too, Gilpin put her fight training from GLOW to good use, looking and feeling convincing as she whooped ass left and right. Hilary Swank, meanwhile, was sadly underused here, only really having much of a presence during the third act, but watching her, I saw why she was a two-time Oscar winner, again lending some added layers to Athena that weren't really there in the script. The supporting cast also livened up the proceedings, particularly Ethan Suplee as Gary, the conspiracy podcaster who teams up with Crystal for a long stretch of the film and represents shades of what could've been a sharper satirical edge. When it comes to virtually every element of this film barring the writing, The Hunt shines.

The Bottom Line

Try as it might, The Hunt really isn't the dark satire of our divided states of America that it wanted to be. What it is, however, is a rock-solid action movie with a great lead performance and a lot of violent, kick-ass fights and shootouts. Ignore all the hype that's surrounded it and see it on those merits instead.