The Hunt (2020)
There's a really compelling film buried somewhere inside The Hunt, and the frustrating thing is you can see it trying to claw its way out. The premise is genuinely sharp: a group of strangers wake up in a field and quickly realise they're being hunted for sport by a crew of liberal elites. It's the kind of high-concept setup that should practically write itself. Somehow, it doesn't quite get there.
The problem isn't the idea. The problem is what the film does with it. At every turn it seems more interested in scoring points off both sides of the American culture war than it does in telling a tight, visceral story. The satire keeps nudging you in the ribs, desperate to make sure you've clocked the joke, and after a while that nudging starts to wear you down. When a film is this eager to show you how clever it is, it tends to trip over its own feet, and The Hunt trips spectacularly. The political commentary crowds out the tension rather than sharpening it, and tension is really what this kind of film lives or dies on.
Which is a shame, because the craft on display is perfectly decent. The performances are solid across the board. Nobody embarrasses themselves, and there are moments where individual scenes crackle with the dark energy the whole film should have. The pacing is reasonable too: it moves, it doesn't outstay its welcome, and there's enough going on that you're unlikely to be checking your watch. The soundtrack does its job without calling attention to itself. So on a purely technical level, this is a competent piece of work. It just never becomes anything more than that.
What I kept wanting was for the film to commit. Pick a lane. Either go full savage satire and really twist the knife, or lean into the action-thriller mechanics and let the concept do the heavy lifting. Instead it sits in an uncomfortable middle ground, too broad to land as biting commentary and too distracted to fully deliver as a genre piece. When you're making a film that wants to skewer political tribalism, you can't afford to be half-hearted about it. The audience will smell the hesitation.
I've got no desire to pile on here, because mixed feelings are honest feelings, and my feelings about The Hunt are genuinely mixed. There's enough here to make it watchable. I didn't switch it off. I wasn't bored, exactly. But I was disappointed, and I think disappointment is actually the harder verdict to sit with. A film that fails completely at least gives you something to react to. A film that's almost something tends to leave you feeling a bit hollow.
If you go in with modest expectations and you're happy enough with a watchable Saturday night thriller that doesn't fully deliver on its potential, you'll probably have an alright time. Just don't go in expecting the sharp, savage, funny piece of work the premise promises, because that film didn't quite get made. What got made is fine. And fine, unfortunately, is about as damning as it gets.
Two and a half stars.
Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5)
Originally logged on Letterboxd.
