Movie Reviews

Loosely inspired by Richard Connell’s ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ this B-movie about ‘liberal elites’ hunting and killing ‘deplorables’ for sport garnered quite some free publicity before its release thanks to right-wing nuts and even Trump himself lashing out in righteous anger. Which is actually funnier than most of the jokes in this movie. I mean, if an over-the-top movie that doesn’t take itself serious for a single second upsets you, then I guess it makes sense you are also the type of person who would vote for Trump.

Anyway, back to ‘The Hunt’.

Directed by Craig Zobel and penned by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, this one starts off with a dozen people waking up gagged in a field in the middle of nowhere. They don’t know where they are or how they got there. And their initial confusion doesn’t exactly wear off when they start getting killed one by one by a bunch of liberals who usually spend their time freaking out over the amount of sugar in soda, climate change and gendered language when they aren’t busy shooting, stabbing or blowing up conservatives.

Yes, the story is batshit crazy and there isn’t a lot to learn in terms of a backstory and hardly any of the characters on either side are more than a cardboard stereotype. But there is a funny scene where a woman gets shot at, falls in a pit and ends up impaled, then gets helped out by someone else, only to then get blown up and ending back up in that same pit minus her legs. So at least ‘The Hunt’ has that going for it. Well, that and a woman named Crystal (GLOW’s Betty Gilpin), the movie’s secret weapon who ends up paired against the liberals’ leader, a woman named Athena (Hilary Swank).

If it hadn’t been for the controversy surrounding ‘The Hunt’ prior to its release, chances are this flick would have never amounted to more than a blip on everyone’s radar. It’s not great, but it’s still a fun way to spend an hour and a half. Unless you voted for Trump that is.