The Hunt

If there's one horror/thriller premise that already got turned into plenty of movies, it's the "hunting humans for fun/sports" idea. There are far too many titles to list, but some of my personal favorites include the 1932 original "The Most Dangerous Game", but also "Blood Camp Thatcher", "Deadly Prey", "The Woman Hunt" and "Surviving the Game". There's always room for anther favorite, though. In fact, there's even room for another twenty favorites, as long as they deliver suspense, gore, fresh & inventive killings and insane characters. Craig Zobel's "The Hunt" is definitely a new favorite!

This film's strongest assets are the eccentric but strong female lead, versus the overall "worthlessness" of the rest of the characters. By this I mean that literally everyone can die at any given moment - and many of them will - regardless of how significant or insignificant their roles have been up until then. I love that. The strong female lead speaks for itself. The woman is quite petrifying, unpredictable, not very eloquent, nihilistic, and deadlier than a whole army of vengeful liberal democrats with guns. She's also quite weird, since she shamelessly pees in front of people and narrates disturbing variants of classic children's stories.

Admittedly, I found the political "satire" very exaggerated and far over the top. Many taboo subjects, like refugees and the free possession of firearms, are inevitably included and the views of both "obnoxious" democrats and "imbecilic" republicans are shoved down our throats, only to conclude that all extremist opinions are deplorable. Yeah, fine, please blow away some more people Mrs. Gilpin! The obvious thing to enjoy here is the extreme violence, the gore and Betty's stoic face.