by Tony Ruggio
Blumhouse’s much-ballyhooed American political satire has finally seen the light of day after postponement due to a mass shooting last August, only to meet an unprecedented global pandemic this spring. With multiplexes closed nationwide, it’s one of a few major motion pictures to release early on VOD. Eschewing anything resembling subtlety or a desire to make a cogent point, The Hunt is a glib quasi-horror romp designed to prod and provoke, but dips into irrelevance by trying too hard for that sweet spot of zeitgeist...
The film is quite gory, if not scary, and is barely saved by a well-choreographed fight scene at its climax and a captivating lead performance throughout. Betty Gilpin is a revelation as a politically neutral, take-no-prisoner war vet thrust in the middle of a sadistic Most Dangerous Game-style hunting safari for rich leftists. Her character Crystal Creasey may be underwritten, but her choices for said character are fascinating. She alone brings her to life in the absence of much happening on the page, going big when you expect her to lay low and vice versa. Gilpin is an unpredictable livewire, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.
Gilpin is surrounded by easy stereotypes and one-dimensional depictions of both the right and left. Here, all Republicans are rural, gun-toting blue-collar folk and all Democrats are snobby, wealthy Hollywood folk. Jason Blum and director Craig Zobel forgot about the inverse cases, I guess. What about the Wall Street uber-capitalists and upper-middle class who voted for Trump? What about the poor working class and struggling Millennials who voted Democrat? By presenting only one brand of voter on either side of the spectrum, The Hunt exacerbates the dumbing down of our national discourse. Dialogue is littered with buzz words and political catchphrases that date the film before the credits have rolled.
It’s not that “deplorables” and “snowflakes” aren’t a part of our national lexicon anymore. It’s that The Hunt parades them around with such glee and garish comedy that it’s clear the movie is stuck in 2017 and feeling clever about it, too. Character actors like Ethan Suplee and Ike Barinholtz do their best to liven things up, but they’re no match for a script that needed a few more drafts.
Swank vs Gilpin in the final battle
Between this and last year’s I Am Mother, it’s good to see Hilary Swank back at it again. At the one-hour mark it’s looking like she might be wasted, and then a third-act womano-a-woman showdown kicks ass for a sustained ten-minute battle that proves to be a true banger. Whoever choreographed it deserves applause. It’s unfortunate I can’t say the same for much else beyond Betty Gilpin, though. C+