Main cast: Ike Barinholtz (Moses), Betty Gilpin (Crystal May Creasey), Amy Madigan (Ma), Emma Roberts (Yoga Pants), Ethan Suplee (Gary), Sturgill Simpson (Vanilla Nice), Reed Birney (Pop), Steve Coulter (Ted), Wayne Duvall (Don), Glenn Howerton (Richard), and Hilary Swank (Athena Stone)
Director: Craig Zobel
The Hunt reminds me of Dogma, that movie from Kevin Smith before he went bonkers and sold out entirely—they are both panned by the right-leaning folks of America for demonizing them, which only proves that they were making a lot of noise without actually watching the movie.
Okay, the Catholic Church may have reasons to screech about Dogma, as the movie didn’t portray them in the best light, but that movie ultimately presents an inspirational, even evangelistic re-imagination of the concepts of faith and humanity that puts Christianity in a more flattering light.
Likewise, The Hunt was said to demonize Republicans, or more accurately, folks that vote right regardless of whether they like Orange Man Bad or his archenemies within that party, but in that movie, the representation of the far right wins. On the contrary, the left-leaning folks of this movie are presented as narcissistic psychopaths. If anything, the right-leaning folks should be loving this movie, because my god, it rakes the type of left-leaning screeching harpies on social media today over the coals and literally murders them.
Athena Stone and her circle of privileged white folks, aside from Mike that openly calls himself the token POC friend, do the usual things that will be familiar to folks that use social media these days: they argue endlessly to see which one of them is the most woke, while hypocritically luxuriating in the lifestyles afforded to them by their positions of privilege. Unsurprisingly, they joke in their super secret text message group about rounding up people with opinions different from theirs and killing them—gee, sounds like most of the morons on Twitter today.
Unfortunately, the group ends up being not so secret when their texts get leaked and people on social media take their joke seriously. Athena and her friends are forced to resign their posts at various charities, so deprived of their main vehicle to appear woke and enlightened, these people decide to make the joke a reality. They will track down and locate some of the social media users that flamed and insulted them, rent a place in Croatia, and then set them loose and hunt them down like they are playing some Battle Royale game in real life.
Unfortunately, again, for them, Athena handpicks one social media that really gets on her nerves to be among the list of prey, but Crystal May Creasey is former military, having served in Afghanistan and all, and she is not the merciful kind once people start to eff with her.
She knows her ways with firearms and bombs, can spot the traps clumsily laid out for preys like her, and before you know it, the prey is practically the hunter. Champagne socialists and faux-progressives really should not mess with a fervent believer of the Second Amendment that also doesn’t hesitate to exercise her rights to bear and use arms in gloriously homicidal ways.
As I’ve mentioned, the faux-progressives and champagne socialists really get raked through the coals here. They can barely function as a cohesive unit, often breaking up into silly arguments because someone uses the wrong pronouns or utters a word that someone else considers problematic. Folks that have seen that hilarious footage of that The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) National Convention in 2019 may wonder whether this script took some inspiration from those convention attendees when coming up with these characters.
Most telling is Athena Stone. She is the most blatant caricature of the faux-progressive Karen: it doesn’t take much for her, as a wealthy white woman claiming to champion the oppressed, to hurl invective and venom against anyone that disagrees with her—hello, present year social media users. The fact that these faux-progressives and champagne socialists will have no qualms murdering people that disagree with them politically should be a clear indication that this movie is not an attack on the right. Just look at it—sure, one of the preys is shown to be racist toward immigrants, but at the same time, they are all portrayed as prey, and best of all, the sociopath of a right-wing ex-military gun-using cliché ends up being the sanest, likable, and accepting of people of the working class.
This movie is not attacking the right-leaning folks of America, it’s an attack of the self-proclaimed left-leaning imbeciles on social media today that embrace cancel culture and other vicious online activities, only to moan and act like victims when they are at the receiving end of their own favorite online activities.
Having said that, do I think The Hunt is a good movie? Well, I’m a bit conflicted. Any movie, or anything really, that pokes fun at the vicious cesspits that are the mainstream social media platforms today is A-OK to me, but it’s also too gimmicky in a way for its own good. It has some interesting ideas, but it barely develops on these ideas, often abandoning them for new ones as the film progresses.
For example, there is one scene that features refugees trying to get into Croatia, which could be used to make some kind of statement about the more hypocritical left-wing views on immigration (“Bring everyone in, regardless of whether it’s legal or not… but not to my neighborhood, please!”), but no. The refugee angle is quickly abandoned for something else in the next few minutes, making the whole scene feel pointless aside from giving Crystal one more body to add to her count.
In the end, this movie sort of makes an unflattering statement about those imbeciles on social media, but the statement is neither deep nor interesting; boiling down to basically “Those people are sociopaths and narcissists!”—like one can’t tell for themselves just from reading any random wall of a Twitter user with a blue tick next to the user name. I wish this movie had gone further in saying whatever it is that it wants to say, ruffle more feathers, be more incisive.
Instead, it abandons most of its satirical premise shortly after the movie begins, for a more straightforward survival battle royale thing, and that’s not an interesting development. After all, Crystal is so much more capable and smarter than most of these imbeciles. It’s not really entertaining to see her mow down those imbeciles; in fact, it feels like watching Lia Thomas compete against other ladies in the swimming pool. What, too soon?
Anyway, The Hunt could be better. Then again, it could be worse. It’s a half-baked affair from folks that are probably too enamored of the concept to realize that the rest of the movie could use a lot more fleshing out. Watch this for the novelty or out of curiosity, sure, but I’d caution against harboring high expectations.
