The Hunt

The Hunt is cross-genre bullshit that aims to please by going against the grain, but it ends up being just an action-revenge B-movie with comical brutality. However, the actress in the lead role is uniquely atypical. The most typical genre characters deliberately come in with a roar in the first few minutes so that the film is surprising in its exposition, setting the viewer up for a fresh experience, which may or may not suit you. (29.07.2020)

I hate movies where the director sits there in awe and says that everyone on the screen is a moron and that's why we're going to laugh at them. This isn't smart satire, it's the movie version of a Facebook discussion with conservatives and liberals arguing; all the smart people have left and now someone comes along and feels they have to tell the rest they're morons. By the way, besides the final fight, it's pretty uninteresting. (02.04.2020)

A controversial fun satire that is a mix of Hunger Games and Hide and Seek! Finally, after a long time, a solid exploitation flick that gets going from the first minute and thankfully doesn't skimp on the gore. It sucks that within the first 15 minutes, the victims get a lot of sorting out, which I personally would have chosen otherwise, but so be it. Betty Gilpin may not be the best actress, but she's very confident in action, she doesn't fuck around, and the grittiness makes you trust her; and she can be sexy. It may be a B-movie at its core but it manages to surprise with entertaining twists and turns, where at times you have no idea who is the hunter and who is the prey, and this play with the viewer works quite well. The best though is the very final cat fight with Hilary Swank, which is the best female fight I've seen in a long time. The logic does falter, but there is decent action. Very entertaining, controversial, with a dose of dark humour and just enough violence. Out of five people, two left the theater, but I had fun. Story***, Action****, Humor***, Violence****, Entertainment****,Music***, Visual***, Atmosphere****. 7/10. (14.03.2020)

A bloody satire that doesn't mess around. Yeah, it’s simple, but it’s not stupid, and it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. And also, I was able to see Betty Gilipin from GLOW again. (19.06.2022)

The first half is a nice and unpredictable semi-parody that relies on the audience’s familiarity with the rules of the genre, but it’s not afraid to overturn them for fun (and it doesn’t feel inappropriate). In the second half, after the most important cards have been revealed, the film falls into its own mirror and, despite the persisting quality of the craftsmanship and the insight, it can no longer surprise. The heroine is convincingly badass, but Hilary Swank’s attractive character (metaphorically and literally) had some more potential and I would have liked a bolder ending, given the concept of rewriting the expectations. Overall, though, it’s surprisingly good. 65% (22.03.2020)

So it seems that in 2020, the number one public enemy for the American people is not international terrorism, communism, crime, or a pandemic, it's political satire! It was clear from the beginning that the "big controversy" about The Hunt was just an exaggerated issue in a global context. The context is a profound political divide between the American left and right, and a significant percentage of Americans feel deeply moved by the mild spring breeze that was tickling their bottoms. After all, The Hunt is just a satirical action movie that indiscriminately wades into many political streams, without seemingly offering anything new, such as the series South Park which has been shouting about issues regularly for the last 15 years. Obviously, the problem is when political satire is presented quite so literally in a relatively big movie. The Hunt has already based a promotional campaign on this controversy after the not inconsiderable postponement of the premiere. At times it's an apt and humorous spectacle, and at other times it's quite unfocused and looks to be overcompensating for something. However, in the end, it's an action movie that tries it's hardest to surprise you and it's certainly not boring and it wouldn't hurt to see it. (22.03.2020)

The Hunt presents itself as a classic forest chase, but (unfortunately) it's not and apart from the first 15 minutes it has nothing much to do with hunting. If the film is special in any way, it's that when you see a person as the main character at the beginning, the director mercilessly shoots them off the screen after a few seconds (Emma Roberts was here for about 20 seconds, wtf??). Nothing goes the way the viewer thinks and in this it way mocks conventional films of a similar genre, and further by portraying the "bad guys" as a bunch of morons. The further the film went, the more I stopped caring, and by the end I was getting pretty bored. From the initial expected chase, to being captured in a refugee camp (the screenwriter was high?) to a woman single-handedly shooting 10 guys like nothing. The script is pretty lame, as is the unnecessarily over-the-top self-awareness of Betty Gilpin and pretty much all the other victims, as in "yay, I'm kidnapped, I've been waiting for this all along and I know exactly what to do now". The film is saved by solid visuals, imaginative Hunger Games-style trappings and occasional gore that's just right, otherwise it's a classic, uninteresting B-movie. (20.03.2020)

We've already had manhunting as a "hobby for the elite", but The Hunt takes this theme from a slightly different perspective. The film offers plenty of black-humour scenes and a pretty solid unpredictability – you really don't know who will die, when and how, which is a big plus. On the whole, I was bothered by the passages with too much talking that unnecessarily stretched out the running time. The Hunt is one of those films where I can understand any rating. Otherwise, Betty Gilpin pushed the envelope a little too hard at times with her bad-ass-look, whatever. (21.05.2020)

I'm pretty convinced that the scariest word of the 21st century will be 'satire'. There are bad scripts, and then there are scripts that are also bad but try to convince us that they are not by pointing out how aware they are of the genre rules they are not afraid to knowingly break. When you then combine this insufferable arrogance with an ironic statement about contemporary society, you'd have to be a real genius to get anything out of it other than a painfully spasmodic rant where even the script must have been written on Twitter, complete with hashtags. And it's probably not worth mentioning that Zobel is no genius. Aside from the final, surprisingly well done and distinctive fight scenes, it's mind-numbingly boringly shot in a typical Blumhouse production where everyone is wearing clean pressed clothes, the set is full of obviously artificial objects, and when he tries to shock, he does it with the aid of laughably digital blood. Lindelof is a filmmaker who based his entire screenwriting career on trying to emulate Joss Whedon, the king of bullshit genre self-reflections (God how I hate them), but didn't have enough talent to pull it off. Now he's just trying to make a buck off of the social and cultural internet wars, where he's trying to prove his ability to balance on a spectrum of opinion that’s pathetic. Plus, when you subtract the context from the film, notice how each scene is completely nonsensically constructed, how people behave in it, and what moves the plot along. This movie is sloppy AF. Too bad for Betty Gilpin, who the whole time gives the impression of either not being able to believe what just came out of her mouth or that somebody else is strung up in her face. She's actually quite funny when it comes to that. Like, for real. (22.08.2020)

I have no idea why horror is listed as one of the film's genres. Black comedy fits much better. Anyway, I had fun while wading through all that blood, and I don't care what it says about me. After all, when the Americans are able to make fun of all their taboo topics once every ten years, I’m ecstatic about how different it is from the constantly celebrated patriotism, riding on a giant wave of pathos. What's more, I loved Crystal’s approach, and I still have to think about how frustrating it must be when you're talking to someone whose head (or at least a substantial part of it) is gone all of a sudden. The film definitely deserves to have a higher rating. (30.05.2020)

Or when you make a film where I just couldn’t understand what the creator was trying to convey... Damon Lindelof recently surprised me with his TV adaptation of Watchmen, and when I saw that he was diving into this film from the screenwriter's chair, I just had to check it out. But as they say... the deed went astray. The Hunt does offer some pretty good moments (the gas station scene, the final, finely crafted female fight between the lead and Hilary Swank), but as a whole, it doesn’t work at all. The lead actress was excellent in terms of action, and I mostly enjoyed the fights and tense moments, but when it comes to the dramatic aspects, it really fell short. The overall story didn’t capture my interest; everything felt so detached, like it was stitched together with a hot needle, and only then did they realize they should have given it more attention. And the attempts at supposedly clever jokes completely missed the mark. I didn’t expect miracles, but this was also a disappointingly mediocre experience. For me, it gets 42%. (29.03.2020)

The Hunt is an American production that is simply average mainstream entertainment in the guise of a horror movie. The movie is above average because it has quite an original narrative and the actors are directed really well. I think this will be a cult film hardcore fans will watch at least once a year. (08.04.2020)

The Hunt, I have to say, was quite a nice surprise, and today's corrupt society just begs for incorrect and satirical movies to be made about it. Although it sounds like a horror on the surface, in reality, it is a quite well-crafted American probe that is pleasantly self-critical and does not hide behind a mask of innocence. The beginning has a decent start. Basically, nothing is expected to happen. I was also pleased by the changing of the ''main'' characters, which I thought, if it had lasted until the end, would have been quite a fresh, original idea. However, that did not happen. Still, the main heroine is very well chosen, and her unknown stony face fits her distinctive role like a butt on a pot. The action tempo keeps it going all the time, we even get some longer battle scenes, and above all, it is also unpredictable. At times, I even thought about giving it four stars because I was really entertained every ten minutes. So far, I'm keeping it tame and will see if it stays with me for a while longer, then I might add more. Entertainment only for true democrats. (28.04.2020)

The Hunt is an interesting but not original film. It will be a hit with Hunger Games fans. At the beginning of the film, twelve people are kidnapped and wake up in an unknown location. The hunt begins. The first half of the film is highly dramatic and it is not clear to the viewer who the main character is and who the actual killers are. The second half of the film is weaker. Here the filmmakers have abandoned the dark atmosphere of the forest and moved into enclosed spaces. The story is not complicated and does not contain any major twists. There are rather unfamiliar faces in the film, but they play their roles very well. As far as the action scenes are concerned, they are professionally handled and one can see that a lot of work has been done on them. An average film that is perfect to watch when bored. (12.06.2023)