'The Hunt' Is a Clever, Hysterical, and Diverting Political Satire/Action Thriller

While outrage mobs, cancel culture, and calling for censorship are regularly practiced by the modern Left, The Hunt proved that the Right can also sometimes succumb to such behavior.  The premise of the movie involves working class conservatives – who are even referred to at one point as “deplorables”, Hilary Clinton’s derogatory term for Trump supporters – getting abducted and taken to a remote location where they are hunted for sport by wealthy liberals.  Conservatives saw this as another Hollywood attack on them, and in anger, they began calling for the movie’s cancellation.  And that was exactly what happened.  This movie was supposed to be released late last year, but partly due to the conservative outcry, it got pulled from its studio’s 2019 release schedule.  Eventually, its release got re-scheduled for early this year.

Back then, I really thought that it was dumb and inconsistent of conservatives to get outraged of The Hunt when, first of all, it’s a work of fiction, and secondly, they hadn’t seen the movie yet.  It felt like the Joker thing all over again.  Plus, even based on its premise alone, it was pretty clear that liberals were the villains of the story.  So why get riled up then?  You may get ridiculed, but it’s the other side who’s arguably getting demonized.

Well, if ever any of those incensed conservatives saw this film, they are probably embarrassed afterward.  First of all (SPOILER), the unreasonable conduct that they had just displayed poetically mirrors that of the conservative characters in this movie.  Second of all, in a sense, The Hunt is actually quite pro-conservative.

At first glance, The Hunt seems like a Saw-type survival horror movie.  And it does have some elements of that.  However, at its essence, it’s actually a straight up political satire.  Keyword: satire.  Hence, the tone is that of a dark comedy.  It has gory deaths and violence, but most of the time, they are done for laughs.  And indeed, this movie has a couple of creative, side-splitting kills and impalements.  Furthermore, when not for the sake of humor, any depictions of brutality and gore in this movie are for the sake of the action.  In other words, The Hunt can actually be more accurately described as “action comedy” than “horror.”

As a political satire, it pokes fun at both sides of the aisle of Trump’s America.  However, it’s something that the Right will more likely enjoy than the Left, because: a.) the Right can usually take a joke; b.) it mercilessly mocks the Left’s penchant for political correctness, virtue signalling, identity politics, and other aspects of their silly SJW ideology; c.) it preaches against cancel culture (which is commonly a Left thing, although in this case, conservatives are the ones guilty of it – both in the movie’s story and in the real-life presumption of this movie); and most importantly, e.) it has a “victim fights back” narrative in which the malevolent liberal elites have the tables turned on them by one of the so-called “deplorables” that they look down to.

The “deplorable” in question is Crystal, played splendidly by Betty Gilpin.  From the first time she appears on screen, you immediately get the sense that Crystal is a different beast from the other abducted conservatives.  Tough, smart, cunning, resourceful, and composed, she easily wins the audience over by displaying remarkable competence and organic badassery amid the uniquely dreadful situation she’s in.  In addition, she’s complexly layered.  While she’s the redneck type and has some crazy in her, she also reveals a sophisticated and intellectual side later in the movie.  All in all, she’s the natural, charismatic “strong female” character, and an impeccable main protagonist to center this charged movie on.

More than just being a movie that has political themes and metaphors, The Hunt is a legitimate and delightful action thriller film.  Crystal’s characterization and arc play a huge role in accomplishing that.

I have two nits to pick, though.  First, I found it utterly dumb of the liberals to provide weaponry for the conservatives – people who live and breathe firearms – before hunting them.  But, I guess, it was probably out of their hubris.  If so, I wish this was spelled out a little bit more.  Second, the movie made a big deal out of keeping the face of the big bad – Athena (played by Hilary Swank) – a secret for the first two acts of the movie.  As a result, I began to expect a mindblowing plot twist directly coming out of this detail or an earth-shattering surprise casting.  However, there was nothing like that.  There was really no reason why she had to be kept faceless.  I found this an annoyingly gratuitous choice in the part of the director.

In the end, all things considered, I extremely enjoyed The Hunt.  In fact, it’s one of my favorite films of 2020 so far.