The Hunt

 2020, d. Craig Zobel - Crave

The Hunt was originally intended as a fall 2019 release, but right wing media got news of the basic premise - elitist lefties hunt right wing deplorables for sport - and had a goddamn conniption fit to the point that the president* of the United* States publicly condemned the film...as if he had nothing better to do.  "The movie coming out is made in order to inflame and cause chaos," he said, with the irony of that statement to be applied 16 months later.

Of course all the butthurt "feelings" that right wing blowhards put on this film was all just more grist for the mill of political divisiveness.  None of them calling for its ban had seen the film at that point.  Those right wingers were projecting and stoking their own fears (which are copious) that lefties would take it as inspiration and legitimately start following suit in hunting your basic salt-of-the-earth, gun-loving, beer drinkin', rah-rah-'Merica 'Mericans.  The reality is that if anyone was going to hunt anyone else for sport, we know what kind of people those would be (and a history of lynchings and mob violence and attempted government kidnappings and coups tells us so).  

So The Hunt was delayed.  Distributor Universal delayed the film's release, they said not as a reaction to Trump's unfounded paranoia, but rather due to multiple mass shootings happening near the release date.  But when it did come out, it was right at the precipice of COVID lockdowns and it barely made a blip in the news cycles.  Suddenly something was more important than left-right political divides... until it wasn't.

If 2020, and 2021 so far, have shown anything it's that these divides are becoming unbridgeable gulfs.  Social media, alternative "news", and even much of the mainstream is pushing people to choose sides.  Hell, the American political system stupidly only accommodates two sides, as if there's no shades of gray, which is part of the problem.  But what isn't being conveyed is that the extreme reaches of both sides are much smaller (although growing) then the flapping gums would have you believe. 

And so we have The Hunt, a film that threatens to stay relevant for far too long, even once we're past the Trump presidency*.  The Hunt, as a story, is not a suggestion on how people should behave, but a broad, grindhousey satire, is fed up with both sides.  On the left you have overly sensitive "well actually" (mostly white) individuals who feel the need to make every cause their own and try to bully anyone and everyone into submitting to it.  On the right, the overly sensitive, the ignorant, the fearful, (definitely white) who want everything they want, their way, and if it doesn't go that way there's got to be someone to blame (other than themselves).

We open with a group chat, where individuals are texting about the "idiot-in-chief" and how, thankfully, they have their deplorable-hunting retreat coming up.  Smash cut to a luxury jet, where a very confused, drugged up, redneck stammers into scene, looking very out of place among the elitists talking caviar and champagne.  The elitists murder him with glee with an unseen woman, their host, dealing the finishing blow with a designer stiletto.  That's what kind of film this is going to be.

Hunger Games style, a group of right wingers emerge in the woods, finding a crate in the middle of an open field.  It's loaded to bear with weapons but just as quick as these people arm themselves, feeling a very false sense of security, they start taking fire.  There's a good couple fake-outs here with some recognizable faces who are taken off the board immediately.

We zero in on Betty Gilpin (GLOW), who seems hypercompetent, and isn't prone to all the wild speculation that the others indulge in.  There's repeated talk of "Manorgate", which I think is an "in story" conspiracy theory, but it sounds just like any of the far-fetched QAnon bullshit that people have taken to in recent years.  This conspiracy theory is just what you think, that elitist left wingers are kidnapping and hunting right wingers for sport.  It's amusing that it becomes hard to actually dispute this as conspiracy given what we're witnessing.

There's a few elaborate set-ups here the lefties have in store for the deplorables, but the film isn't content to just play out their version of The Most Dangerous Game.  We spend time with both sides, and they're kind of annoying or despicable both, but played for laughs, so long as you get that the joke is how ridiculous they both sound.  Gilpin's whole thing is that she doesn't care who's hunting her, or why, only that they are.  She's also a little (*whistles*) so this is helping her burn off some pent up whatever.  She's also got a "tortoise and the hare" analogy she's lived her life by, that has some dark edges to it, where the hare goes and murders the tortoise and his family after beating him in the race.  Yeah.

[SPOILERS]

The movie leads us to the final confrontation between Gilpin and Athena (Hilary Swank), the main orchestrator of this whole endeavor.  But the third act starts with a flashback to a year before, when Athena is removed from her own company after the opening text chain about hunting deplorables -- just a joke to begin with -- goes public and spreads like wildfire.   Everyone on the thread was impacted.  So they get together and start to pick out who the instrumental players were in spreading the "Manorgate" story, and decide to make Manorgate real, since so many of them think it's real anyway.  These rumor mongers are the people they round up, except Gilpin's character was a case of mistaken identity.  Athena doesn't believe it and they have a knock-down, drag-out fight anyway.  Athena seems obsessed with Orwell's Animal Farm but it's Gilpin who sets her straight on its message (highlighting that elites think themselves morally and intellectually superior than they actually are).

[END SPOILERS]

The end result is a story that reflects (and lampoons) how divided present day America is in the wake of the Trump years.  There's rampant distrust of one's neighbour, fuelled by capitalists who want to profit or otherwise benefit from such discord.  And if you think the story paints Gilpin as the accidental hero of the story, she's just another piece of the problem puzzle... the cynical centrist who is only in it for themself. 

It should be made clear that the script from Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers, Watchmen) and Nick Cuse is intentionally a very, very broad swipe at both sides.  The humour is very easy, because both sides have made it very easy to make fun of them by merely repeating their own absurdity back at them.  It's not a film that's moralizing, or making any grand statements except to say that, maybe, the extreme dialogue from any source leads to  dehumanizing people, turning them instead into a vilified idea.  There's no room for empathy or understanding once you've given over to extreme ideology.

This is not a serious movie, nor is it subtle.  It tackles its subject matter with all the delicacy of using a sledgehammer to crack an egg, yet everything is intentional.  It is smart enough to know how to play with these two extremes to entertaining ends, like how Mythbusters play with some very dangerous toys, smartly.  Like a proper grindhouse movie, it tackles its topic-of-the-day with a plethora of silly, gross gags and deaths.   It revels in each kill as a sort of punchline, and as an equal opportunity offender.  It's a film that's had enough and just wants both sides to shut up for a while, but instead of being angry it's just kind of numb to the chatter.  It wants you to know that it thinks you're stupid for believing in conspiracy theories and that your aggressive political correctness is pretty off-putting (and probably counter-productive to your intentions).

I liked this movie, quite a bit. It's like drinking a Slurpee, pretty enjoyable except for the occasional brain freeze.