Grab your panic gags and your symbolic and literal pig because this week we are covering The Hunt.

Stats

Released: March 2020
Director: Craig Zobel
Writer: Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Budget: $14,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $7,399,986 (as of 22/07/2020)
Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Wayne Duvall

Breakdown and Analysis

  • A Lindelof of a hunt. A Swank of a hunt. A Million Dollar spoiler, if ya nasty.
  • To say the movie didn’t have any sort of meta referencing, it kind of makes it seem disingenuous.
  • This movie was watchable. It was ok. And there is nothing wrong with ok. You should not nor should you watch a masterpiece everyday. There needs to be some garbage in between.
  • It was cute and playful, the way some characters are named, Vanilla Nice. Not so much, yoga pants.
  • Specifically for America, this movie focuses on conservatives and liberals. Your politics can sometimes become someone’s personality. You associate with a party and I am going to prescribe everything I think about it to you. We get why Damon was overly apologetic so as to not upset people. But to be so bold as to make a movie like this and apologise for it in interviews, it feels mismatched.
  • It was fun to watch. It tried to speak to some political truth out there. However, to see them dismissing the message, we did not care for.
  • There was a very pointed dialogue of Athena feeling justified in her actions. Athena could treat people who are lesser. Understanding the plight of refugees but to aim torture towards those that don’t. It made no sense. She is so puffed up in her own fumes. She just couldn’t see it. It could be argued that perhaps it is smart and meta on how society is and can be. However the commentary, particularly through Athena’s final speech felt too sharp. Too have a full movie to finesse the message and it still came off gruff. Being able to interweave key messaging through the tapestry of your narrative is a skill that KT would attribute to Lindelof. Execution? Not so much. It felt very elementary. It could have been delivered in a more integrated way. Even at the end, it was a shock that Crystal read Animal Farm. It could be a note to how extremists completely disregard the other side, but starkly done. Athena believed anyone that wasn’t in their elite circles were not learned and had nothing to offer. Because she operated with a distorted sense of justice, she went back on everything she stood for. Even when she was talking about it not being a manor, she was not understanding. Whatever you want to call it. It is what it is. Athena lacked the accountability of what she did, even to the point where she trained for 8 months in preparation.
  • There’s no excuse. We have Black Mirror, Inside No 9 and Twilight Zone. We have anthology shows that can perfectly execute a narrate in under an hour. The fact we get a whole film to live and breathe in this space, it is disappointing to have pointed dialogue “Poor people read”.
  • Crystal absolutely makes this movie. Her attitude can very much reflect what the audience is experiencing. The killing happens at the start so there wasn’t any emotional investment until Crystal shows up. And where the narrative failed, Crystal made up for it a hundred fold.
  • They could have placed the importance of the final scenes throughout the movie. Placing a flashback scene felt so disjointed. It is bothersome.
  • There are times where reveals are worth the build up but then you play a precarious game of taking too long for the reveal. And this is what happened in The Hunt. It doesn’t matter how big the star is, taking longer than an hour is wanker behaviour. KT was hoping Athena would be Pedro Pascal.
  • KT doesn’t buy Hilary Swank as a villain. Neither does Oti.
  • You don’t bring a shotgun to a glass fight.
  • The interesting component is when the characters start to realise they are the lambs being led to slaughter. Oti picked on it very early. KT arrived at it when they jumped over the fence. We knew they were destined to kill each other or be killed by someone else. So to be able to jump over the fence felt too easy. So once we happened upon the shop owners, it was clear something was going awry.
  • The Hunt was what Zombieland could have been without Jesse Eisenberg. Very effective and more would have survived.
  • There were enough elements to enjoy the world we were given. It’s a shame this movie got tousled due to real world events. It would have been nice to hear Lindelof’s real thoughts. The messaging became blunt because they were all being frayed in different directions. It was hard to know where morality lies. If can exist on both sides, the narrative presented was not steeped in enough nuance.
  • Even if you think you are doing the right thing, operating from any sense of justice (which will always be distorted because you are operating off your own volition), is very dangerous.

Unrelated but vital points

  • If a film is shit in your home viewing, maybe it is just shit. There is only so much a viewing experience can factor.
  • Blumhouse is a darling in the For Your Reference household.
  • Where we are is where we never were.
  • Oti barely remembers anyone’s names but knows Betty Gilpin.
  • We tried rewatching Lost (KT first watch) and pacing was a big problem. It was groundbreaking in it’s theatrical quality but the pacing is too hard not to notice on another watch.
  • We are sitting in the damp corner of the podcast world as all IT people are.
  • Not only is Randy Marsh, Lorde, he is also a Kenyan man.
  • Merch idea: Vintage Girdle.
  • Heaven is being able to lay on Christina Hendricks’ milky bosoms.
  • If KT is on her deathbed, she is exposing everybody. No one is safe.
  • For Your Reference tag line: It’s hard not to say that it isn’t, when it looks, smells and fucks like it is.

For Your Reference

Oti

[imdb style=”gray”]tt0411008[/imdb]

KT

[imdb style=”gray”]tt2184339[/imdb]