Review: Controversial thriller ‘The Hunt’ is finally in theaters; don’t waste your time

“The Hunt,” a movie straining so hard to be edgily of-the-moment that it can’t help but be utterly irrelevant, strives to impress viewers with sadistic killings, oozing viscera and extravagant gushers of blood. But its most dramatic spectacle might be the sight of a facile, lazy enterprise being hoist on its own cynical petard.

Scheduled for release in August, “The Hunt” was pulled in the wake of mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso. Although we live in a near-constant state of “too-soon” (five people died at the hands of a gunman in Milwaukee just two weeks ago), presumably Universal deemed March a safe enough month to slide “The Hunt” into theaters, having tweaked its marketing to embrace the controversy that erupted over the film last summer, when pundits who hadn’t seen it yet criticized the film for glorifying violence against conservative voters.

It turns out that “The Hunt,” its detractors and its studio’s attempt to cash in on its notoriety are all textbook examples of a colossal self-own: As a remake of the 1932 people-hunting thriller “The Most Dangerous Game,” this tepid iteration uses the ghoulish premise mostly as an excuse to trot out increasingly gross rituals of torture and body horror.

Using the conceit of liberal elites exacting revenge on know-nothing “deplorables,” the filmmakers heap plenty of smug, self-amused scorn on both sides, but there’s no doubt who the hero is once the tables are turned. Trying to goad audiences into multiplexes with the tag line “Decide for yourself” seems particularly deluded at a time when coronavirus and hyperpartisan burnout are leading most viewers to decide to stay home and cocoon.

It’s doubtful that anyone venturing out to partake of “The Hunt” will be provoked, much less offended, by its politics, which amounts to glib jokes about snowflakes, NPR and cultural appropriation on one hand and climate change denial, “crisis actors” and the “deep state” on the other. There’s not a MAGA hat to be found, and the only reference to President Donald Trump is when someone refers to an unprintable epithet in chief.

But screenwriters Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse commit precisely the same sin of reductive thinking and crude stereotyping when they make “The Hunt” a crypto-class war, ignoring the inconvenient truth that most of the voters who tipped the election in 2016 were relatively well-off.

Such hairsplitting is far beyond the remit of Lindelof and Cuse, who have crafted “The Hunt” less as a polemic than as an infantile, pox-on-both-your-houses rant. The put-downs and arguments serve only as so much verbal scaffolding for the film’s real purpose, which is to shoot, impale, blow up and otherwise gruesomely dispatch as many of its loathsome characters as possible. Simply put: There are very vile people on both sides.

The lone sympathetic figure in “The Hunt” is a cool, preternaturally capable blonde nicknamed Snowball, cooly played by Betty Gilpin with studied ennui and a monotonal Mississippi accent. A superb problem solver and sure shot, Snowball manages to escape and evade most of her tormentors until the final half-hour, when “The Hunt” – a movie that shows zero respect for the laws of physics, ballistics or human anatomy – goes from irritating to inane.

Competently directed by Craig Zobel (who made his debut with the similarly opportunistic “Compliance”), “The Hunt” arrives by way of Blumhouse Productions, which has become a reliable destination for horror fans. Although admirers of extreme violence might be gratified by the film’s metronomic scenes of graphic mayhem and gore, anyone looking for smart social commentary along with their thrills will be better served by streaming “Get Out” or the “Purge” instead. Self-quarantining can be just what the doctor ordered in more ways than one.