The Hunt (2020) – A Movie A Day #93
The Hunt (2020) – A Movie A Day #93
The Hunt is the movie that was supposed to come out last year, but was delayed after people started making assumptions about what the movie is and what it means. I really don’t want to go into all the details about why it got put on hold, but it had to do with some mass shooting that took place prior to its release, as well as certain people taking to Twitter to sow the seeds of misinformation and polarization. Just Google The Hunt if you really want to know the details.
Regardless of the reasons The Hunt was delayed, I figured the people who were talking and tweeting the loudest about how horrible it is were probably going to be wrong. The people who seem to rage the loudest about how morally reprehensible a movie is tend to either not understand it or never even bother watching it. The Hunt hadn’t even been released when people clamored for its shutdown, so clearly they hadn’t seen it. But hey, a movement for censorship is all you really need for a great marketing campaign. So, good job everyone.
I saw images for The Hunt and read brief story summaries around the time it was first supposed to come out, but I don’t remember seeing a trailer for it until much later when a new release date was announced. The trailers looked fine, but certainly not great. The heavy-handed political mockery present in the trailer really kind of turned me off. Like, I’m fine with political mockery and satire, but I’m just not entertained when it comes across so obviously and with so little subtlety. But I thought maybe the trailers were just playing up the political satire angle to take advantage of the already politicized comments about the movie flying around the internet. With my expectations low, I went into watching the movie with as open a mind as possible.
So I saw it, and I didn’t enjoy The Hunt very much.
The movie is about a group of people who are kidnapped and hunted for sport. The hunters are rich and elite, while the hunted are middle class and below. The hunters get caught up on gendered pronouns and hoping everyone is pro-choice while the hunted get worked up about immigration and crisis actors. You see where this is going? Yeah. It’s like the writers cherry-picked the most politically polarized comments from the internet and crafted them into dialogue to be spoken by characters who might as well be cardboard cutouts of real humans. But I think I’m being too nice. I don’t think many things were “crafted” in The Hunt. It’s a wooden attempt at political humor that, for me, falls completely flat. I got just as much laughter and joy out of the comments on the YouTube page for The Hunt‘s trailer as I did with the characters in the actual movie. Also, don’t go look at the comments on the YouTube page for The Hunt‘s trailer. They’re mostly atrocious.
Anyway.
Here’s some stuff I liked about The Hunt. Betty Gilpin’s character of Crystal was pretty interesting. Well, I should say that Betty Gilpin’s performance was interesting. Crystal came across as somewhat of an enigma. While everyone else was wearing their political ideologies on their sleeves, Crystal was quiet and calculating. She was more concerned with staying alive, and it quickly became clear that she had a past that would help her to not die. Crystal’s true nature remained a mystery all the way until the end, and even when the movie ends, her true motivations arguably remain ambiguous. So yeah, Betty Gilpin is good.
What else do I like about The Hunt? They mentioned a movie I do really like, Tears of the Sun. I liked that. I also started to want to watch Tears of the Sun while sitting in front of The Hunt.
Anything else? No, not really. Everything else was just varying shades of mediocrity or head-shaking moments of attempted humor. Nope, I didn’t like it.
It’s funny though. The hubbub about the movie stemmed largely from fears that it is meant to incite division among the American people. I just find it hilarious that when reading comments from people who have only seen the trailer, different people will bee 100% sure that the movie is insulting them regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum. The movie skewers all sides. It looks like it’s trying to be smart, but it’s not. Not at all. People just love to get mad at stuff. The Hunt isn’t worth getting mad at.