The Hunt (2020)

It seems like the whole world has gone crazy. And what better way to get rid of craziness, then go to the movies? Movies are, in my opinion, a chance to escape from the horrors of the real world, and embrace a world of fiction and make believe. Unfortunately, “The Hunt” released through Universal and Blumhouse, is not one of those movies were the chance of escapism is present. There are some moments in the film that do stand out, but the main critical problem of the movie is that it doesn't know what side to choose. The film has a loose political agenda, but it is not executed well. While “The Hunt” does deliver some solid, and decent action, as well as some good humor, it falls short on what it's trying to accomplish in the long run.

The story has a group of individuals waking up in a deserted area, having no idea of where they are. Upon opening a crate, they are rewarded with weapons, not knowing on how to use them. Suddenly, shots are ringing out, and they are now being hunted. One of the main people to survive this attack is Crystal (Betty Gilpin), who, along with a few other people that had managed to easily survive the onslaught, tries to figure out just what the hell is going on here. And that there may be some sort of political agenda attached to it.

“The Hunt” is one of those films where the history behind it is more fascinating than the actual movie itself.

Originally, the movie was supposed to arrive in theaters in early fall of 2019. However, some unfortunate circumstances prevented this; mass shootings all across the United States seemed to parallel the events dictated in the film. This pushed this film's release to its current slot on the calendar. Does that make the film any better? Eh...

“The Hunt” does have a couple of good things going for it.

For starters, the action provided is intense, and handled extremely well. Every major shot in this film is done very well, and the violence provided here does quite do something unusual for something like this: the gore effects are reduced to a minimum. Throughout most of the feature, the main reason why this film obtains its R rating in the first place, is mostly due to the language and tense situations. But it's a hard R, nonetheless.

Another contributing factor to this movie is the editing. That, and the music choices, make the movie a pretty unique experience. The editing makes the film fast, and at roughly an hour and a half, time sure flies when you're having fun.

Betty Gilpin does deliver a pretty good performance, and is given good direction from Craig Zobel. She truly makes the entire movie truly stand out.

With that being mentioned, the film does have some big issues presented.

For starters, the rest of the contributing actors don't really offer much other than, here's another character that we're supposed to care for, but not really. Craig Zobel has this sort of weird direction for these characters, and it doesn't pay off in the long run.

But the real issue here is with the story itself. At first, it almost feels like a remake of The Most Dangerous Game, using the exact same premise of using humans being hunted for sport. However, the film tries to play it smart and trow in some political statement on the status of society. And while it's there, it's not executed properly. From what I gather, the film is trying to say that both lower class and upper class citizens can't seem to fully make up their minds. And with that context in mind, it doesn't reach a full answer by the film's end. Perhaps if the writing was a bit more darker/comical, then, we would have gotten a somewhat decent dark comedy. Yet, as it stands, with “The Hunt”, all we have is a straightforward action movie.

Overall, “The Hunt” tries to work in some political commentary about the state of people in today's world, but it ends up being an unbalanced action film that cannot decide what side to choose.