All Hunts Matter

Like many a genre film fan, I love nothing more than a good hunting humans flick. Battle Royale, The Human Race, The Belko Experiment, Surviving the Game, The Hunger Games for the kiddos. No year passes by without me watching The Running Man, only to immediately search for any new genre films like it that I might have missed.

No one would miss The Hunt this year. In any other time, this dark comedy would probably have fought to make back its budget in theaters, maybe garnering a loyal fandom once it hit streaming sites. Instead, the Blumhouse original infamously became another chip in political debates and later, the first major American release to be directly affected by COVID-19.

It's a weird journey for a genre film. 

Quick Plot: A fancy private jet filled with wealthy snobs gets a shake when a man who was clearly supposed to be in a deep sleep awakens in terror. One of the passengers kills him, much to the annoyance of his fellow passengers.

We shift to an open field and a crate full of some confused and gagged deplorables. Before we even learn their names, most of them are gunned down or, preferably, blown up.

Maybe I'm just a simple, simple woman, but I have a very hard time not finding self explosions very, very funny.

Very quickly, our batch of unsuspecting prey gets whittled down to a small handful. They seek shelter in a roadside convenience store only to finally learn the game they're playing: it's a hunt, set somewhere in eastern Europe, and the rules are...well, the rules are simply that there are some angry, wealthy Americans trying to kill you.

The sharpest of the scant batch of survivors is Snowball, or at least, that's the name bestowed up on her by the team of wealthy liberals hunting her. Snowball (the perfection that is fellow Fordham University alumni Betty Gilpin) is a tough talking southerner with skills that would make the most experienced marine envious.

By now, you probably know quite a bit about The Hunt, or at least, have heard the title thrown around in a whole lot of news stories over the past year. Written by Damon Lindelof and his Lost co-writer Carlon Cuse's son Nick Cuse and directed by Compliance's Craig Zobel, The Hunt's initial theatrical release was famously delayed because its marketing campaign and subject matter seemed in poor taste following a pair of mass shootings. It went on to open just as the rest of the country was closing, making it instead of the first big screen releases to have a VOD showing while it was in theaters.

There's something very interesting about how The Hunt became such a hot potato of American cultural debate, particularly because as a film, it's aggressively committed to being so politically apolical. Using the South Park school of making anyone with extreme views look like a buffoon, it's almost as if the writers kept a scoreboard to make sure that liberal and conservatives were being equally skewered at all times.

I was hesitant to watch The Hunt not because of its politics (or lack thereof) but because I couldn't imagine not being distracted by the pile of baggage that came with the film. I rather liked Zobel's Compliance, but some of megaproducer Jason Blum's comments during the frenzied press calls came off as smug in a way that I assumed would be fitting to the film.

Thankfully, The Hunt is - and I realize this is an odd thing to say about a movie with this history - a really good time. Yes, some of the attempts at coating its red vs. blue characters in silly hypocrisy comes across as forced, but the action moves so swiftly that you barely have time to roll your eyes before someone's head is being blown off.

Most importantly, it cannot be overstated how much Betty Gilpin brings to this movie. There's something to be said when you watch a performance and realize no other actor would have played it the same way. Whether she's telling her favorite childhood fable or being unimpressed with Hilary Swank's culinary advice, she just brings such a fresh energy that elevates the entire film.

High Points
Give. Betty. Gilpin. An. Action. Franchise. Now.

Low Points
Much like South Park, there's something a bit exhausting and unsatisfying in the nature of a film being so committed to not committing to anything. It's important for The Hunt, and truthfully, I'd probably be even harder on it had it swung any further right OR left, but there's still something a bit hard to swallow with that school of attitude

Lessons Learned
If you know you're crazy, you're just really mad

The only way to properly slice tomatoes is with a bread knife

Always ask before eating the cookies

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you can unhear all the arguments that erupted during The Hunt's heavy press days, head to Hulu and have a watch. This is a fun movie made with some wildly goofy energy, and while its broad characterizations can be a little much at times, its humor overcomes most of the flaws. It's a good, weird time. 

Just Following Orders

During my freshman year of college, I took an introduction to psychology class and received the worst grade of my university career (B-, because I'm a NERD). Aside from crushing my self-esteem, this course instilled in me a very, very important rule to live by: 

Never be the subject that proves a terrible truth about humanity.

This class involved watching a few videos about the infamous Milgram experiments and what they might say about our tendency to accept sheep status when a leader has taken control. One of the videos followed a lesser-known and far more relatable study than the "how many electric shocks would you issue if someone in a lab coat told you to?" In this case, two people (one a control and the other the unknowing subject) were led into a room to take a written test. Just outside the door, they passed a man doing maintenance work while standing on a ladder. They were instructed to sit down, write their answers, and not to leave the room or speak with one another until the time was up.

Ten minutes into their "exam," there is a loud sound as if the man on the ladder has fallen and is moaning in pain. The control continues to take the test, making no effort to investigate. The subject seems conflicted, but ultimately follows the lead of the control and continues on course despite the screams coming just outside the door. When the same experiment is run without the control, the subject usually breaks the "rules" and checks on the individual outside.

Rorschach had his Kitty Genovese and I have this educational video to keep me in line when it comes to hive minding. I'm sure I can still be duped into submitting to authority despite my own instincts, but I try to be conscious of what I think is right if it doesn't seem to match instructions. Or maybe I just always make a point of checking on someone if I hear a crash.

My point with this rather overlong intro is not that I'm anywhere close to being a psychology expert (remember: B-) but that it's easy--so easy--to do what we're told without any kind of introspection. Today's film is about such a case, and while it's a horrifying extreme, it also really happened, and could potentially happen to all of us.

Let's see if they start showing this in intro psychology classrooms.

Quick Plot: Sarah is the manager at a ChickWich, a fast food joint filled with your typical fry grease and unmotivated minimum wage employees. Just before her Friday night shift gets busy, she receives a phone call from a policeman named Officer Daniels informing her that Becky, the pretty young cashier, has been caught stealing money from a customer's purse. Because there's more to this case than petty theft, Sarah is advised to bring Becky to the backroom and keep her in holding until the matter can be resolved.

It doesn't exactly end there. Daniels convinces Sarah that finding the stolen money will make things easier all around, leading to a strip search and confiscation of Becky's clothing. As the restaurant gets busier and busier, Sarah is forced to bring in her almost-fiance Van to help supervise Becky, something made more than a little uncomfortable by the fact that Van may have had a few beers on the way. Daniels asks a little more of Van. Since Becky fears Daniels is mounting a bigger case against her brother (who was casually mentioned on the phone call), she continues to comply with the increasingly odd demands.

Written and directed by Craig Zobel, Compliance is very closely taken from a real event that occurred in a Kentucky McDonald's a few years back (you might even remember the Law & Order: SVU episode on it, wherein Robin Williams advised 30 Rock's Pete to do some very bad things). As much as I typically cringe at an "inspired by real events" tagline, it's actually vital in this case because otherwise, it would be so easy for the audience to judge the characters and wonder why they're so accepting of the situation. It's not really any kind of a spoiler to say that Officer Daniels is no cop, that Becky never stole any money, and that Sarah is not about to be named employee of the month.

Daniels (played by the wonderful Pat Healy) is a master manipulator, and while his targets aren't necessarily the sharpest tools in the burger industry, it's completely believable to see them buy his persona without too much questioning. When you know the truth, it's easy to realize that he never names names or gives any real specifics. But every fast food joint has a 19ish year old working the counter, and if you ask her about a family member that might have trouble with the law, there's a good chance that every 19ish year old will have one of those too. That middle-aged restaurant manager will of course be incredibly cooperative if she thinks she's speaking to a policeman with her regional manager on the other line. We're eager to please those in charge. It's human nature.

Compliance is a horror movie, one that will make you cringe. It's also an incredibly important reminder that doing the right thing isn't always the same as doing what we're told. You won't feel good watching it.

High Points

There's such a mastery in Daniels' manipulation of the situation, but it's most horrific in how he's able to immediately shut Becky's protestations down and continuously make her feel small. The worst thing you can ever say to a woman is "calm down" when she's not actually overreacting, and the writing and performances so perfectly nail how such an instruction would work

I'm not in any way the first person to say this, but Ann Dowd's performance as Sarah is so achingly real that it goes a long way in making Compliance work as well as it does

Low Points

The last ten minutes or so deal a little with the aftermath, and while Sarah's arc continues to be fascinating, it feels as though the film stalls a bit in understanding how Becky has come to process the experience

Lessons Learned

You're fucked without bacon

Skinnies don't have pockets

Always check your minutes before using that calling card

Rent/Bury/Buy

Compliance is an incredibly uncomfortable film to sit through. Much like a similarly morally muddy indie gem Scalene, it presents its case and characters with such a believable realness that the entire experience is that much harder to take. This is definitely worth seeing (and is currently streaming on Instant Watch) but remember that it's not an easy ride.