The Hunt is a 90-minute movie that waits 25 minutes to introduce its main character. Up to then, it’s an onslaught. One, two, three familiar TV actors get mincemeated. You catch sight of Betty Gilpin, but when The Hunt briefly arrived four years ago today, only GLOW viewers knew who she was. So her first proper scene is a surprise, and a declaration. Gilpin (we barely ever hear her character’s name) walks into a gas station. The two kindly proprietors, “Ma” and “Pop,” are planning to kill her; we just saw them mop up three corpses. Gilpin does not blink when she orders a pack of Lights, does not blink when she asks what state she’s in. “Arkansas,” the grinning murderers lie. Ma charges over ten dollars per pack: Coastal rates. Gilpin slams Ma’s head, overjumps the counter to blast Pop with his own shotgun. “Cigarettes in Arkansas only cost six bucks,” she tells the cowering Ma. Gilpin’s eyes go wide — monster-movie wide, I Am Become Death wide. Her voice drops a register and she roars, “You fucked up, BITCH.” Boom, splat.
Worth watching for that moment alone. The script by producer Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse is never better, but never boring. A bunch of abductees wake up in a forest. Unseen people start killing them. Someone mentions a conspiracy theory, “Manorgate,” this idea that wealthy Democrats are kidnapping MAGA types for sport. Gilpin human-pinballs between bloody confusions, never trusting allies. We glean only a bit of her backstory: Military, Afghanistan, a thousand-yard stare. There is death by blade, death by grenade, death by kitchen. If it were a Purge it would be the funniest Purge, mainly because Gilpin is more deadpan and more deranged than the typical action-horror hero. Stream it on Peacock today and you can appreciate The Hunt just as a sick joke, directed by Craig Zobel with a professionalism I’d backhandedly describe as “Sitcom Verhoeven.”
But the scattershot satire is worth addressing. All non-Gilpins are clichés: privilege-shaming wokesters, dirtbag gun nuts. This, the critic argued unconvincingly, is the point. The Hunt is about social media, not politics. I wish the core concept wasn’t such a buried twist. The film hit theaters right as COVID annihilated the theatrical experience, so nobody in 2020 had the bandwidth to dig into the movie’s later revelations. See, the hunt started out as a joke. Some limousine liberals group-text playfully about “going out to the manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables.” Adult Swim humor, but when the texts leak, the scandal forces executive retirements, foundation departures, and shredded reputations. The vengeful texters make their slaughter meme an actual slaughter. They pick their prey based on who’s saying mean things about them online. The Hunt puts people on blast, literally, upcycling social media anger into weaponized duels. A more accurate title would be Hell Site.
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