Only 5 more days until Vulcan’s Forge is published and a gentle reminder that pre-orders count more than post publication orders for ranking and sales numbers.

Movie Review: The Hunt

Last night a friend and I split the cost to rent The Hunt a film more cursed with it release than my own novel’s trouble path to publication. Originally scheduled for release last year The Hunt is a graphic violent satire of the current political climate forged with the classic story The Deadliest Game. The overt and over-the-top political bent of the characters created a controversy last year and the title was pulled from distribution. Now the release has been thrown into chaos by the COVID-19 pandemic and the studio moved it to on-line rentals to recoup at least some of the production cost.

Betty Gilpin plays Crystal, one of nearly a dozen conservative characters who are kidnapped and awaken in a forest lethally hunted by cultural elites for sport. With a modest budget of 14 million dollars and released by horror studio Blumhouse The Hunt is over all an unsatisfying picture. None of the characters are fully developed and the yet are also not broad enough for over the top satire. The film takes too long to connect with its main character and I found that distancing and prevented me from becoming emotionally engaged in her struggle. Perhaps the greatest failing of The Hunt is as satire. Satire requires a point, an argument, it needs to stand for something and to say something. While it is far from necessary for the film to ‘pick a side’ in the liberal/conservative cultural war it satirizes it is necessary that the film say something, make some sort of point. The classic film Doctor Strangelove is satire with broad characters and does not pick a side in the US vs USSR cold War but does make a point about the madness of mutually assured destruction and living on a knife’s edge. The Hunt makes no statement, exhibits no point of view, but simple moves caricature of characters through cartoony chaos. While my friend enjoyed the movie, I find it is not one I can recommend.