The Hunt: Human-Hunting Gorefest Smartly Offends/Endorses the Left and the Right
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
It must be a peculiar source of pride to Hollywood that both the political right and left have accused it of brainwashing, subverting decency, and being contemptuous of people on their side.
Officially the most controversial movie of 2019 long before its release this week, the horror satire The Hunt taps into the culture wars with gory enthusiasm and some satiric bite. Part of the delay was related to the Dayton and El Paso mass shootings, but the movie was also shelved after expressions of outrage from Republicans about its supposed premise: Hollywood elites promoting liberal elites hunting deplorable Trump supporters for sport!
The prime accuser was President Donald Trump who took to Twitter to denounce “liberal Hollywood” for a movie that was “racist at the highest level,” adding that “They like to call themselves ‘Elite’ but they are not Elite.’” Pedants might point out that “liberal Hollywood” provided Trump with two prominent insiders to create his travelling carnival: treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Beyond that, you may note that the premise of hunting humans for sport sounds a bit cliched, and you would be correct. The plot is based on a 1924 short story, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, which has gone through multiple adaptations (Hard Target, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity) and parodies over the past century.
The current movie, directed by Craig Zobel (Compliance) and co-written by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse — all veterans of the critically lauded HBO series The Leftovers under horror mister Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions shingle — updates the story with topical discourse on the culture wars, internet conspiracy themes, social media shaming and, yes, the preciousness of the privileged.
The one thing the Critic-in-Chief got spectacularly wrong (one thing?) is that this is not a movie justifying the killing of conservatives. If anything, the conservatives, being simple and thus pure of motive, are the relatively good guys. The libs, those who fly in private jets and drink champagne and eat beet chips and mock the President, are the real psychos.
They’re the ones who capture and round up a bunch of deplorables (online trolling seems to be the common ingredient) to hunt and hunt down ‘cause it’s fun. Again, a pedant might point out that hunting down people who spend a lot of time exercising their mouse fingers on Reddit does not seem like the most challenging form of prey, but we can all agree those people are certainly annoying.
In any case, a dozen deplorables get drugged, gagged, and dumped into a field where they awaken with metal gags in their mouths, which is a bit funny because they all sound like Elmer Fudd.
“It's a twap!” one woman declares when they see a wooden crate in the middle of the field. The crate contains a pig and a small arsenal of weapons, which is damned sporting of the unseen hunters. But since the hunters soon pick off most of the group with long-range rifles within the first few minutes, it's not really a level playing field at all.
Along with the copious and fairly inventive gore, there are a number of twists afoot for the audience. In a cast that includes Betty Gilpin, Amy Madigan, Ike Barinholtz, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts, and Hilary Swank, you should not get attached to anyone for too long.
OK, there are a couple of survivors who make it to the last round. Swank plays Athena, the mean Queen Bee of the vicious offended liberals. Is it possible she was cast just because her name is Hilary? And there’s one disenchanted hillbilly war vet named Crystal (as in Meth, played by Gilpin of TV's Glow), a sullen Mississippi ol’ gal with an accent like a mouthful of sweet potatoes and a talent for dispatching people she don't like.
As for the experience of watching The Hunt, I didn’t find it especially deplorable. Within the frame of an old-fashioned stab-and-splatter exploitation flick, The Hunt is consistently smartish. There are references to George Orwell's 1984 (the pig, it turns out, is named Orwell) and amusing riffs on performative inclusiveness and politically correct language and the hot mess culture of compulsive outrage.
If it’s any comfort to the deplorables, the liberal elites really are much worse than the dopes who troll the internet and spin demented conspiracy theories. One can assume that the filmmakers probably are the sort of people who make their grilled cheese sandwiches with gruyere rather than cheddar and describe sugar as "poison."
They may even be the kind of people who believe the President is one of those people who are “either an idiot pretending to be smart or a smart person pretending to be an idiot” but they choose their targets astutely. The theory here, presumably, is the left can tolerate this satirical corrective of their intolerance and urge to shut down all those awful people while the right will just enjoy seeing them get their smart-asses whupped.
The Hunt. Directed by Craig Zobel. Starring Amy Madigan, Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Hilary Swank and Ike Barinholtz. Opens wide March 13.