The Horror Show
The Hunt
by Craig Zobel
After being pushed back six months, the highly anticipated and controversial political horror-satire The Hunt finally got its release this past March. Still, even with a straight to streaming release amid theater closures putting this film right in people’s living rooms, I think quite a few may have overlooked it with COVID-19 being at the forefront of everyone’s brains.
I had been waiting patiently for this gem since I first saw the trailer well over a year ago and I watched it the night it came out. (Yeah, I’m a bit late on my review, but that’s what happens when you have a child harvested from your midsection.) Dubbed “sick and twisted” by Fox News, The Hunt is a fast paced, no holds barred, violent barrel of laughs. From the very beginning we are treated to an onslaught of death in which you have no clue who to root for and the story develops into a glorious game of cat and mouse with fun — yet predictable — twists and turns. With laugh out loud moments from the start, I knew I was going to enjoy this flick so I settled in and kept my eyes glued to the screen until the credits rolled.
Sure, this is a premise that’s been done many times before, think The Most Dangerous Game or Battle Royale, but the reasons behind the hunt in the story are what make it stand out. There are major role reversals when compared to reality and that made it all the more fun. The dialogue was witty, the characters were just the right amount of tropey, not to mention their names were hilarious, and the film never stalled to bore me at any point.
It’s been touted as “anti-conservative propaganda” by names I won’t even bother bringing in to this review, but I must say that it’s exactly not that at all. Seems like someone may need to look up the definition of propaganda. In fact, The Purge seems more like propaganda to me than The Hunt, and I just made myself chuckle while typing that sentence. So, that’s saying a lot, isn’t it?
There’s a great cast of actors and actresses from main characters to cameo roles and there’s just something about seeing Glow’s Liberty Bell (Betty Gilpin) kick some major ass outside of a wrestling ring that is majorly entertaining. Predictable plot points aside, the only thing that really bothered me about the film was the finale. I can’t spoil it, but let’s just say that when you watch a soldier run around kicking ass and taking names for an hour and a half, you don’t expect her to meet her match with an amateur no matter how hard they train. I rolled my eyes a lot, but hey, the film had to find a way to wrap up, and this was about as good an ending to this fun roller coaster as we were going to get.
If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check out The Hunt, available to stream now on iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu, and YouTube.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
The Horror Show Menu.