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Mar 11, 2020 · Reviews. Mar 11, 2020 7:10am PT. ‘The Hunt’: Film Review. An intense, over-the-top satire of partisan politics taken to its most dangerous extreme, Craig Zobel's controversial thriller...
Mar 11, 2020 · Producers: Jason Blum, Damon Lindelof Executive producers: Craig Zobel, Nick Cuse, Steven R. Molen, Couper Samuelson, Jeanette Volturno Director of photography: Darran Tiernan
- A darkly comic satire of our political divide.
- Verdict
By Scott Collura
Updated: Apr 28, 2020 10:30 pm
Posted: Mar 11, 2020 1:00 pm
A satire about these extremely politically divided times that we live in -- Red State vs. Blue State was reportedly the title of an early version of the screenplay, actually -- Universal’s The Hunt is now finally here, almost six months after it was originally scheduled to be released. As it turns out, the film is a blast when it’s at its best, and even when it’s not at its best, it’s still not much to get worked up about in terms of its political message. The Hunt swings big, but it’s much more a critique of hyper-partisanship on both sides than a condemnation of the views of either end of the spectrum.
Produced by Jason Blum through his Blumhouse Productions, written by Watchmen’s Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse, and directed by Craig Zobel, The Hunt takes the tried-and-true concept of “The Most Dangerous Game” and applies it to an exaggerated version of our fractured political landscape. This updated concept is the reason the movie was delayed half a year, shifted by the studio over concerns of its release being insensitive coming on the heels of the tragic, politically motivated mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso last August. In the conversation surrounding that shift, The Hunt was criticized in the media and, seemingly, by President Trump.
But to take The Hunt on its premise alone is to miss the point, as it’s through-and-through a satire where hippie-dippy, woke, liberal caricatures compete with rhino-hunting, conspiracy-minded conservative distortions, and none of them are portrayed as being anything close to righteous. Where this war in our real world may have begun on the airwaves of cable news and has been fought largely from the relative safety of social media anonymity, The Hunt takes this splintered political dialogue to its ultimate, bloody, and ridiculous endpoint in the form of a human hunting expedition.
Before anybody saw it, Universal and Blumhouse’s The Hunt was the subject of much controversy last year, but it turns out that the actual film and its hyper-violent social commentary is smarter than it was given credit for back then. Director Zobel and writers Lindelof and Cuse, peering through the lens of social media hijinks and polarized politic...
Mar 13, 2020 · 57% Tomatometer 277 Reviews. Fresh audience score. 66% Audience Score 500+ Verified Ratings. Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are -- or how they got there. In...
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- Craig Zobel
- R
- Ike Barinholtz
Mar 20, 2020 · Reviews. The Hunt. Monica Castillo March 20, 2020. Tweet. Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. This originally ran on March 13, and we are re-running because of its early VOD drop. Craig Zobel ’s “The Hunt” is filled with more memes than plot.
Mar 11, 2020 · Whether it turns out to be the most talked-about movie of the year is anyone’s guess, but given producer Jason Blum’s impressive track record at the box office, a whole bunch of people will...
Mar 11, 2020 · Blumhouse's new film The Hunt is finally arriving after having been delayed and I'm here to reveal whether it was worth the wait. Here's our review.
