• Release Date in USL: 13 March 2020
• Release Date in India: 16 May 2022
• Language: English
• Genre: Action, Horror, Thriller
• Duration: 1h 30min
• Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Wayne Duvall, Ethan Suplee, Ike Barinholtz, Sturgill Simpson, Kate Nowlin, Christopher Berry, Justin Hartley, Sylvia Grace Crim, Emma Roberts, Walker Babington, Jason Kirkpatrick, Amy Madigan, Reed Birney, Glenn Howerton, Teri Wyble, J. C. MacKenzie, Macon Blair, Usman Ally, Steve Coulter, Ariel Eliaz, Alexander Babara, Dean West, Vince Pisani, Tadasay Young, Jim Klock, Steve Mokate, Hannah Alline
• Director: Craig Zobel
• Producer: Jason Blum, Damon Lindelof

The Hunt Trailer

A Brief Into About The Hunt Movie 

Craig Zobel’s “The Hunt” has more memes than narrative. The provocative film, which sparked widespread outrage online last fall, was eventually withdrawn when the president voiced an uneducated opinion. Almost everyone’s opinion came as a surprise because few people had even seen “The Hunt.” Regardless, after all the commotion, the film is more of a molehill than a mountain. Betty Gilpin and we both deserve better.

The film begins with a loud overture and a stiltedly performed group text that would become significant later. We have then whisked away on a luxurious flight, where the liberal rich are feted while random impoverished conservatives from around the country are drugged and put up in the back of the plane. The following scene begins with the kidnapped victims waking up gagged and walking towards a mysterious box in a field, similar to the cornucopia in “The Hunger Games.” The most deadly game comes when their shackles are removed and the shooting begins.

Before getting into the film’s tangled politics, I’d like to focus on what I liked about it. There are a few exciting and suspenseful passages, such as the initial shootout in the field and some hand-to-hand battles. Zobel embraces the exploitative possibilities of reproducing Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game for a new audience, complete with bloody boobytraps, a grenade placed down a guy’s pants, and a splattery wound from arrows, knives, and bullets.

Crystal (Gilpin), the film’s hidden weapon and saving grace, stands tall and stern-faced in the midst of the terrible squall. While few of the other characters on either side of the liberal/conservative divide ever climb above a trite cliché, Gilpin’s performance as a reluctant fighter elevates her to the level of a hero. She portrays Crystal with a tight-lipped and reserved demeanor, possibly as a holdover from her previous job at a car rental service where she had to put up with rude customers. We later learn that she served in the military, and Gilpin symbolizes this by moving tightly but fast, demonstrating that part of her discipline has worn off over the years through a few nervous ticks. Still, her focus is on survival, and she never lets her guard down, like Rambo from Mississippi. Those of us who have seen her as Liberty Belle on Netflix’s “Glow” know that she is playing someone utterly against type, which is thrilling to see.

Aside from Gilpin, the film falls apart. The antagonists in this narrative are liberal elites led by a woman named Athena (Hilary Swank) who has a ridiculous social media backstory driven by the Manorgate conspiracy theory. It’s one of many lifted and reworked headlines in “The Hunt,” which, despite its use of trendy words and internet slurs, doesn’t add up to anything other than surface violence. “The Hunt,” written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, demonstrates how “both sides” do not always work logically. How did a group of liberals who are easily irritated by sugar in soda, climate change, and gendered language turn to killing for sport? Instead, the film plays on conspiracy theories about crisis players and notions that rich liberal elites are out to murder them, and this is when things become less amusing.

Zobel, Cuse, and Lindelof created a film to own the liberals and conservatives, which may be the most capitalist (or nihilistic) approach to politics yet. The unoriginality of “The Hunt” extends to its cinematography, which Darran Tiernan paints with one shade of grey and maroon bloodstains, Matthew Munn’s mediocre production design, and costume designer David Tabbert’s stereotype-reaffirming outfit. The film is both disposable in its inability to say anything—anything!—about the current political atmosphere other than “Oh, it’s hazardous out there” and a curious cultural artifact of the times. It’s just as probable that if it hadn’t been for a little flash on social media, this movie would have flown in and out of theaters with no fanfare. Perhaps there is more to be learned from “The Hunt” than what happens in the film.