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The Hunt Reviews

Progressive Hunger Games, some good action moments and jokes for a film that feels written by AI. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 4, 2023

The Hunt is a brilliantly dark satire on today’s political views of the world. It’s meant to be one of the most divisive films of the last few years, and it undoubtedly succeeds in its mission. Like dark humor, either you’re okay with it, or you’re not.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2023

The Hunt is a movie at odds with itself. It wants to shed light on urgent social matters the writers think are worth discussing. Yet, bizarrely, the political slant here doesn't go the way anyone was expecting.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 20, 2023

Betty Gilpin is spectacular... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 11, 2023

I really enjoyed watching The Hunt and I’m grateful that the film was actually released. I understand the worries that people had, but most of the talk surrounding this film that got it canceled was a bit excessive.

Full Review | Jan 22, 2023

There is definitely a cutting satire to be made here... yet the film ends up taking potshots at so many subjects that it just ends up missing its targets. Rather than an impressive trophy kill, the end result is a disappointing flesh wound

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 11, 2022

Craig Zobel’s The Hunt purports to be a satire, but I am unconvinced its makers know precisely what they are satirising.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 7, 2022

The Hunt is a clever, gory good time. In a perverse way, it’s about unity and coming together.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 27, 2022

The idea at the core of “The Hunt” is a worthy one. We could certainly use a clear-eyed reminder of how toxic and sectarian our political discourse has become. I’m just not sure this is the movie to do it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 21, 2022

By skewering everyone, deserving or not, the film skewers no one. If you’re going to make a satire promising to anger everyone, you should come with a more insightful script.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 20, 2022

The Hunt offers two or three sequences that genuinely impress but too few surprises to extend its novelty for the entire 89-minute runtime.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 21, 2022

despite lofty ambitions, The Hunt is too keen to be embraced by the widest possible audience to land any killer blows to anyone

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2022

Betty Gilpin does such a fantastic job in The Hunt. We don't know a lot about her character (and there is a reason for that). She doesn't speak a lot, but when she does, she will surprise you.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Feb 11, 2022

People relying solely on the trailers or the outraged articles have only a surface-level of the movie. But the movie's not that deep, either.

Full Review | Nov 16, 2021

The film is a series of reactions, overreactions and overreactions to overreactions, and never rises above the milieu, as if not a single component of American culture is worth salvaging.

Full Review | Jul 27, 2021

While the purpose of the film might be lost, the humor and action is easily found. There is a lot of fun to be had with these idiotic characters (on both sides) and the gruesome, sometimes, shocking deaths they experience.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 23, 2021

The film is definitely political. However, it's not quite as black-and-white as pundits want you to believe. Ultimately, I don't think it matters where you fall on the political spectrum; The Hunt is a fun flick.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 5, 2021

The Hunt is nothing more than a live-action cartoon where [all characters] are painted in such broad strokes that it's impossible to mistake it for anything resembling substantive.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

Action and gore revel in blood-soaked splendour...triumphs...thanks to a sharply constructed premise that offers a piercing assessment on the American political divide.

Full Review | Original Score: 15/20 | Apr 1, 2021

THE HUNT is a comedy (with horror elements)... It's a satire, but a satire that you might not be all that comfortable with.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2021

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‘The Hunt’: Film Review

An intense, over-the-top satire of partisan politics taken to its most dangerous extreme, Craig Zobel's controversial thriller delivers the excitement, if not necessarily the deeper social critique.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Last summer, even before the public had gotten a chance to see it, humans-hunting-humans thriller “ The Hunt ” became a target for pundits on both sides of the gun control debate, when mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, prompted critics to consider the media’s role in glorifying violence. In response, Universal ripped director Craig Zobel ’s movie from its Sept. 27 release date and rescheduled the thriller for spring 2020, making room for national mourning in the wake of the horrific events, only to turn around and use the controversy as an unconventional marketing hook.

While not nearly as incendiary as the early coverage made it out to be, “The Hunt” gives skeptics ample ammunition to condemn this twisted riff on “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which a posse of heavily armed liberal elites get carried away exercising their Second Amendment rights against a dozen “deplorables” — as the hunters label their prey, adopting Hillary Clinton’s dismissive, dehumanizing term for the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” contingent whose fringe beliefs have found purchase with President Trump. No matter who you ask, the “right to bear arms” was never intended as justification for Americans to turn their guns against those they disagree with, whereas that’s the premise from which “Lost” creator Damon Lindelof and co-writer Nick Cuse depart here — partisan politics taken to their most irreconcilable extremes — as Zobel proves just the director to execute such a tight, well-oiled shock-a-thon.

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Sure enough, Zobel, Lindelof and producer Jason Blum (riding high on last month’s “The Invisible Man”) have wrought a gory, hard-R exploitation movie masquerading as political satire, one that takes unseemly delight in dispatching yahoos on either end of the spectrum via shotgun, crossbow, hand grenade and all manner of hastily improvised weapons. The words “trigger warning” may not have been invented with “The Hunt” in mind, but they’ve seldom seemed more apt in describing a film that stops just shy of fomenting civil war as it pits Left against Right, Blue (bloods) against Red (necks), in a bloody battle royale that reduces both sides to ridiculous caricatures.

Popular on Variety

And yet, “The Hunt” is a good deal smarter — and no more outrageous — than most studio horror films, while its political angle at least encourages debate, suggesting that there’s more to this hot potato than mere provocation. Let’s assume we can all agree that there’s too much violence in American movies today. The danger of “The Hunt” isn’t that the project will inspire copycat behavior (the premise is too far-fetched for that), but rather that it drives a recklessly combustible wedge into the tinderbox of extreme partisanship, creating a false equivalency between, say, Whole Foods-shopping white-collar liberals and racist, conspiracy-minded right-wingers.

Back in August 2017, two years before the shootings that put heat on “The Hunt,” Trump sent a troubling message to the whole country when he responded to a murder at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., by insisting that there were “very fine people on both sides.” Zobel and Lindelof explore the opposite view: namely, that the actions and opinions of the two sides can be equally deplorable.

There are no good guys in “The Hunt,” just hunters and hunted, in which both parties are played by character actors whom viewers might recognize from TV. A few have slightly higher profiles (the lefties are led by a lunatic named Athena, stunt-cast with Hilary Swank ), although the movie establishes early on that off-screen status does not confer greater survivability. One of the film’s pranks is to surprise audiences with cleverly timed and diabolically creative “kills” whenever possible, and more than once, faces you may recognize explode right before your eyes, all but splattering the camera in the process. It’s revolting, sure, but nowhere near as upsetting as the “torture porn” genre that preceded Blumhouse’s entry into the horror arena and, frankly, far less offensive than the psychological violence perpetrated by Zobel’s 2012 indie “Compliance,” in which a faceless caller, claiming to be a police officer, convinces a fast-food manager to detain and degrade one of her employees.

Zobel has directed just one feature since then, “Z for Zachariah,” focusing instead on prestige TV, and it’s clear from an early scene aboard a private jet en route to the Manor, where Athena and her guests plan to do their hunting, that the practice has honed his ability to balance between squirm-inducing dialogue and high-stakes suspense. Meanwhile, the film’s plotting is pure Lindelof, who keeps us guessing by dropping clues to “Manorgate,” as the conspiracy surrounding Athena’s activities is referred to among nut-job bloggers like Gary (Ethan Suplee) and Don (Wayne Duvall), only to reveal a more elaborate program than even they could have imagined.

This much “The Hunt” establishes early: Roughly a dozen deplorables (again, the film’s word for them, conveyed via an on-screen text conversation that goes viral among the same network that gave credibility to Pizzagate, prompting a vigilante to take action) are drugged and kidnapped from around the country and flown out to an undisclosed location (not at all where they think). They come to in the middle of a field, where an ominous crate sits. Little by little, using what’s implied to be their limited intellect, they manage to unlock their bite harnesses (a torture porn touch, to be sure) and arm themselves, but it’s not until their unseen hosts start shooting that they put two and two together.

Although the liberals may have the upper hand at first, they’re not any smarter than their quarry, and the movie hooks us by suggesting anything can happen, and following through on that promise with a series of inventive booby traps. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when someone steps on a mine or lands face up in a Viet Cong-style punji trap, Zobel and his visual effects team have answers, relying on a graphic mix of CG and practical gore effects to turn such preposterous situations into genuinely startling moments.

Naturally, the project recalls Jordan Peele’s recent “Get Out,” which implicated well-mannered white people in a nefarious plot to steal the brains and skills of unsuspecting African Americans, as well as 1995’s early Cameron Diaz starrer “The Last Supper,” wherein a group of liberals lured contemptible conservatives to dinner, only to poison them when they refused to see reason. (There’s also a soupçon of “MADtv” star Ike Barinholtz’s irreconcilable-differences satire “The Oath,” so it’s fitting that he should appear as one of the hunted here.) But none of those movies took its premise nearly as deep into the realm of horror as Lindelof and Zobel do here, which is the potential advantage of a film that’s rather anemic in its social commentary — there’s not much depth beyond such easy punchlines as a self-hating liberal saying, “White people, we’re the f—in’ worst” — but that delivers on the visceral thrills of trying to survive a rigged game.

As the umpteenth variation on Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” however, “The Hunt” is one of the most effective executions yet (it surpasses the Cannes-laureled “Bacurau,” in theaters now, but drags along too much baggage to best last year’s sleeper-hit “Ready or Not”). Regardless of one’s personal political affiliations, it’s hard not to root for the victims here, and one quickly distinguishes herself from the pack of “Deliverance”-style caricatures: Crystal May Creesy (Betty Gilpin of “Glow”), a MacGyver-skilled military veteran who served in Afghanistan and whose distrust of any and everyone makes her uniquely suited for a final showdown with Athena.

After all the buildup, that scene inevitably disappoints in its attempt to explain its own mythology, though the well-matched womano a womano confrontation between Gilpin and Swank is worth the price of admission. Culturally, it does no one any good to stoke discord between two contentious parties, but when the conflict reduces to one-on-one — and “The Hunt” stops pretending to be a parable about modern politics — it’s easy to appreciate the efficient 90-minute horror-fantasy for what it is: not a model for violent behavior in the real world, but an extreme outlet for pent-up frustrations on both sides.

Reviewed at London Screening Room, March 5, 2020. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 90 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blumhouse production. Producers: Jason Blum, Damon Lindelof. Executive producers: Nick Cuse, Steven R. Molen, Craig Zobel. Co-producer: Jennifer Scudder Trent.
Crew: Director: Craig Zobel. Screenplay: Damon Lindelof, Nick Cuse. Camera: Darran Tiernan. Editor: Jane Rizzo. Music: Nathan Barr.
With: Ike Barinholtz, Betty Gilpin, Emma Roberts, Hilary Swank , Wayne Duvall, Christopher Berry, Sturgill Simpson, Kate Nowlin, Amy Madigan, Reed Birney, Glenn Howerton, Steve Coulter, Dean J. West, Vince Pisani, Teri Wyble, Steve Mokate, Sylvia Grace Crim, Jason Kirkpatrick, Macon Blair, J.C. MacKenzie.

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The Hunt Review: A Sharp, Even-Handed Satire That’s Also Gory Fun

In August 2019, the theatrical release of Craig Zobel’s The Hunt was indefinitely delayed. This was the result of a controversy in the wake of the movie’s first trailer (which admittedly did put an emphasis on the “horror” side of the horror/comedy), and the suggestion that “Hollywood” was pushing a blockbuster advocating violence against conservatives. Of course, all of these various attacks came from people who hadn’t actually seen the film, and the reactions were entirely based on the limited footage released and the studio-published plot description.

Now it’s almost exactly seven months later, and while nothing in the world has really changed, and nothing in the movie has changed, The Hunt is arriving in theaters nationwide. That fact alone makes one wonder what the point of the controversy/delay was in the first place, but there is an extra kicker: not only is the film a smart, even-handed satire that plays no favorites when poking fun, the way that the narrative surrounding the release ultimately lines up with one of the core messages of the story is so deeply ironic that it is essentially meta.

Written by Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse, and initially inspired by the wild conspiracy theories that populate right wing message boards, The Hunt brings one of these radical ideas to life with the execution of an event dubbed Manorgate. Orchestrated by the mysterious billionaire CEO Athena (Hilary Swank), the “game” finds a group of strangers kidnapped, drugged, and let loose on the property of a vast estate where they are hunted by Athena’s rich, liberal friends. None of them have any specific idea as to why they were targeted, though they all generally possess conservative values.

While just about everybody is sincerely freaked out and looking for an exit, the only one keeping her wits about her is the enigmatic Crystal a.k.a. Snowball (Betty Gilpin). Of those being hunted, she is uniquely skilled to not only adapt to her environment, but also take the fight to the hunters.

The Hunt finds ways to both be grounded in the real world, and impressively silly.

The Hunt is a film that definitely benefits from having an audience that knows as little about it as possible going in, as the twists and surprises it has in store come flying at you immediately, and it’s fascinating to simply let the movie reveal itself to you. A big part of what makes it so compelling is a unique approach to world-building, which both leans into the boundary-pushing horror/comedy elements while still keeping a foot firmly planted in reality. As everything unfolds, it’s easy to recognize the news stories that clearly inspired the larger ideas behind the plot (some of them specifically namedropped), and at the same time it’s clear that Craig Zobel, Damon Lindelof, and Nick Cuse have a blast taking those ideas to their most extreme points without ever breaking them.

To that end, this is a movie that definitely doesn’t lean away from its R-rating, which is something that winds up serving both aspects of the tone throughout. The first act alone, featuring the start of Manorgate, is a fantastic representation of this. Put into the minds of the characters that find themselves waking up on the ground gagged in a mysterious location, you immediately sympathize with the terror that they are experiencing – but then once things start going absolutely haywire The Hunt starts to have its fun. In certain moments it causes you to start laughing simply by throwing a series of surprises directly into your face, and in others it’s about a certain level of gratuitousness at which you can’t help but giggle.

If you have strong political views, but can also laugh at yourself, you’ll enjoy The Hunt.

Like any horror movie or any comedy, there is a subjective nature to the material, as not everybody digs on bloody violence, and everybody’s interpretation of the word “funny” is different – but what’s particularly interesting about The Hunt is how it engages with an individual audience member’s political leanings. While the controversy surrounding the film suggests particular bias, the reality is that this movie is for everybody, and particularly the politically invested… provided that they have the capacity to laugh at themselves. It takes aim at much of the ridiculousness that can be found in both right wing and left wing ideologies, but more importantly it targets commonalities between the two sides and satirically exposes them, allowing the movie-goers an interesting opportunity for self-reflection.

There are certain moments where it tries a bit too hard, particularly when throwing around zeitgeist terms that have a tendency to clang and feel unnatural. Far more often than not, however, it clicks, and those who allow themselves to be open to it may even gain an certain amount of perspective they may not have had prior to seeing the movie – which is truly one of the greatest gifts of satire.

Betty Gilpin delivers an excellent performance as part of a well-utilized ensemble.

The cherry on top of the Hunt sundae is that audiences are treated to an amazing big screen breakthrough performance from Betty Gilpin. Fans of shows like Nurse Jackie and GLOW are certainly already well-aware of what the actor can do, as she has been doing great work for years, but she is given the opportunity to shine as Crystal in a way we haven’t seen before in features. It’s a touch strange, as the character is purposefully maintained as an enigma throughout the film, but she is captivating from the moment she is introduced – seen from afar getting her bearings by creating a makeshift compass with a pin, a leaf, and a pool of water. Over the course of the movie we only learn scant details about her past, but she makes for a compelling heroine with an iron-tight grip on her emotions and awesome fortitude.

While revealing too much about them would be a disservice to The Hunt and your experience watching the movie, the rest of the ensemble is also outstanding and well-utilized – not to mention that any character actor geek is going to have a field day simply identifying the recognizable faces. Very much delivering on the unexpected, Emma Roberts and Ike Barinholtz are standouts among the supporting cast with roles guaranteed to surprise, and Hilary Swank ’s Athena winds up being a fantastically layered antagonist, but we also get some fun times with Ethan Suplee, Glenn Howerton, Amy Madigan, Wayne Duvall, Macon Blair, and more in diverse and surprising roles. At the end of the day, though, this is Betty Gilpin’s show, and she rules.

There is a weird number of people who seem to think that they have The Hunt totally figured out sight unseen, but it should be made clear: they don’t. What this movie is actually about is the danger and consequences that come with jumping to extreme conclusions without sufficient evidence, and that fact alone will hopefully get some blind detractors to purchase a ticket and give it a chance. Provided you go into it with openness and are willing to hear what it has to say, you won’t be disappointed.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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Directed by Craig Zobel

Only designated people may be hunted at the manor.

Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are—or how they got there. In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, ruthless elitists gather at a remote location to hunt humans for sport. But their master plan is about to be derailed when one of the hunted turns the tables on her pursuers.

Betty Gilpin Hilary Swank Ethan Suplee Teri Wyble Ike Barinholtz Wayne Duvall Emma Roberts Christopher Berry Sturgill Simpson Kate Nowlin Amy Madigan Reed Birney Glenn Howerton Steve Coulter Dean J. West Vince Pisani Steve Mokate Sylvia Grace Crim Jason Kirkpatrick Macon Blair J.C. MacKenzie Tadasay Young Hannah Alline Jim Klock Usman Ally Ned Yousef Iyad Hajjaj Justin Hartley Hans Marrero Show All… Charli Slaughter Lucas Eagans Adoria K Lewis Lucy Golden Juan Gaspard Giovanni Cohea Troy Roker Jeff Brockton Yosef Kasnetzkov Mikel Albagdadi Tirol Palmer Alexander Babara Ariel Eliaz Walker Babington Martin Harris

Director Director

Craig Zobel

Producers Producers

Julie Goldstein Jennifer Scudder Trent Jason Blum Damon Lindelof

Writers Writers

Nick Cuse Damon Lindelof

Casting Casting

Terri Taylor Amelia Chen Miley Elizabeth Coulon Ally Conover Sarah Domeier Lindo

Editor Editor

Cinematography cinematography.

Darran Tiernan

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Lars P. Winther Steve Lonano

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Jeanette Volturno Couper Samuelson Craig Zobel Nick Cuse Steven R. Molen

Lighting Lighting

Sergio Villegas Kevin Slark Brian Posslenzny

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Greg Morris John S. Moyer

Production Design Production Design

Matthew Munn

Art Direction Art Direction

Jason Baldwin Stewart Nealy Orillion

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Monique Champagne Dwight Stanley Cassie Catalanotto Jessica Stumpf Brian S. Freeman Bethany Horning Zac Tate

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Ed Hawkins John Gibson Jenné Marie Guerra

Stunts Stunts

Chelsea Bruland Todd Bloomer Nicolas Bosc Nick Benseman Joanna Bennett Cara Marie Chooljian Chris Bryant Ted Barba Taran Butler Ashley Nicole Hudson Nick Brandon Bruce Concepcion Jacob Dewitt Tyler Galpin Matt Cipro Brooklyn Proctor Met Salih Sarah Irwin Jean Claude Leuyer Monica Lopez Aleman Jeff Galpin Richard T. Hoover John Zimmerman Chris J. Fanguy Hans Marrero Troy Roker Caitlin Dechelle Preston Schrag Luke Hawx Juliene Joyner Michael Yahn Amy Lynn Tuttle Arturo Dickey Jared S. Eddo Casey Hendershot Nito Larioza Kevin Reid William Scharpf Adam Horwitz Taryn Terrell Jackson Spidell Jeff Brockton Hank Amos Heidi Moneymaker

Composer Composer

Nathan Barr

Sound Sound

Leslie Bloome Laura Heinzinger Joanna Fang Ryan Collison Nick Seaman Robert C. Bigelow Rich Bologna Diego Perez Will Files Phil Barrie Mark Paterson Mark Patterson

Costume Design Costume Design

David Tabbert

Makeup Makeup

Lauren Thomas Stacey Perry Ma Kalaadevi Ananda Leah Vautrot

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Emily Stegeman Donita Miller Dee Leveque Tony Ward

Blumhouse Productions dentsu White Rabbit Productions Universal Pictures

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

English Arabic Croatian

Releases by Date

10 mar 2020, 11 mar 2020, 13 mar 2020, 09 apr 2020, 16 apr 2020, 23 apr 2020, 14 may 2020, 21 may 2020, 28 may 2020, 11 jun 2020, 18 jun 2020, 22 jun 2020, 31 jul 2020, 13 aug 2020, 17 feb 2021, 20 mar 2020, 27 mar 2020, 24 jul 2020, 10 aug 2020, 30 sep 2020, 26 oct 2022, 09 jun 2020, 06 jul 2020, 03 aug 2020, releases by country.

Theatrical MA15+
Theatrical 15+
Physical K-16 DVD, Blu-ray
Theatrical 12
Digital VOD
Physical DVD & Blu-Ray
Digital 16 OCS
Digital 18 Amazon Prime
Theatrical Κ-18
Theatrical 16
Theatrical 18
Digital VM14
Digital R15+

Netherlands

Digital 16+
Theatrical M18 (edited)
Theatrical 15

South Korea

Physical 15 DVD
Premiere ArcLight Hollywood
Theatrical R
Physical R DVD, Blu-ray

90 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by clementine ★★★½ 19

me vs trying to figure out what side of the political spectrum this movie is on

Review by maria ★★★ 5

i can't say with which of these two i identify the most... the pig or the dude who asks where the hand sanitizer is

Review by hollie amanda ★★ 7

this isn’t even a movie americans just be like that

Review by aaron ★★★½ 8

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

okay a few points: - she kinda snapped - I blinked and emma roberts was gone - I LOWKEY LOVED THIS IM SO SORRY FILMBROS

Review by davidehrlich ★★★ 10

“The Hunt” begins with a bunch of NPR-addicted neoliberals poaching a wild pack of Trump-worshipping MAGA types for bloodsport. Director Craig Zobel’s ultra-violent satirical update of “The Most Dangerous Game” aspires to be the movie that America needs right now; it’s a giddy slaughterhouse of mirrors that hopes to bring this country together and make it great again by reflecting the absurdity of us vs them resentment. The movie literalizes the rhetoric of a culture war that has divided the United States into “globalist cucks who run the deep state” and “redneck deplorables” with little wiggle room in between. Blumhouse’s latest blast of low-budget social commentary tries to split the difference between centrists and nihilists — between “bothsidesism” and “nosidesism”—…

Review by matt lynch ★★½ 2

Look I'll give this credit for a commitment to cheap thrills and, like everyone else is saying, Betty Gilpin was a lot of fun. But this is mostly just kind of smug in its calling out of what's allegedly dangerous hypocrisy on both sides, and the caricaturing it has to do in order to make that argument -- which is exactly the kind of lazy shorthand that generally gets labelled satire these days -- is consistently eyeroll-inducing.

Review by Jay ★ 11

the closest were gonna get to glenn howerton as patrick bateman i guess

Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★½ 7

the way that this actually kinda served and now i want a grilled cheese

Review by DirkH ★ 11

Satire (noun): the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Farce (noun): a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.

Cause the makers clearly picked one and made the other.

Review by Josh Lewis ★★ 1

Sorta like Battle Royale but with the potent expression of adolescent rage concerning adult condescension and senseless violence replaced with a bunch of broad American culture war signifiers. Not even half as provocative as it thinks it is and the action mostly sucks.

Review by 🎃🔥Mr. Like🔥🎃 ★★★½ 9

Rotten Tomatoes: 50 Metacritic Metascore: 54% IMDB: 6.5

Release Date : 13 March 2020 Distributor : Universal Pictures Budget : $14M Worldwide Gross : $6.5M Total Film Awards : TBD

2020 Ranked

Crystal : "Cigarettes are $6 in Arkansas. YOU DONE FUCKED UP BITCH!!”

SYNOPSIS: Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they've been chosen - for a very specific purpose - The Hunt.

I still held out hope that it would be released eventually following its cancellation last September because of the political backlash it received, and luckily Universal still had the guts to do so. In fact, their recent media spots have only exploited the controversy of the cancellation/delay…

Review by trin ★★ 4

the hook of this movie for me was emma and then BOOM

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The Hunt Is a Gleeful Exploitation Flick Ruined by Delusions of Relevance

The best take on The Hunt comes from its own main character, Crystal, a Mississippi car-rental employee and veteran who’s one of a dozen people who are abducted and stalked for sport for reasons initially unclear. Crystal — played by GLOW ’s Betty Gilpin with the kind of delectably unflappable timing ’80s action franchises were once built on — muses that interpreting the reasoning behind what’s been happening to her depends on whether the people responsible are “smart pretending to be idiots or idiots pretending to be smart.” Technically, she’s talking about her trigger-happy captors, a group of wealthy liberals searching for kicks and catharsis by killing a curated selection of members of the alt-right. But it’s an observation that, while bluntly stated, works just as well when applied to the movie she’s at the center of.

If you take The Hunt as the former, then it’s just a nasty exploitation flick, a riff on “The Most Dangerous Game” with a thin veneer of contemporary context. But it’s almost impossible to see it as anything but the latter — a splattery satire that’s actually trying to say something about the polarized moment in which we live. Courtesy of the conservative ire the film attracted before its initial planned release last September, ire that made its way up to the attention of the president , the garbled commentary that The Hunt offers up is pretty much guaranteed to be taken more seriously than the creative team behind it (including director Craig Zobel and writers Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof) likely ever expected. There’s a bountiful, extremely 2020 sort of irony to the way The Hunt depicts cancel culture, given that the movie itself experienced a ludicrous temporary cancellation. It’s a two-hour testament to the perils of casually throwing around terms like “deplorables” and “godless elite” without actually appreciating how little meaning they may have, and how much baggage they’ve nevertheless accrued.

The script from The Hunt often feels like it was generated by pulling randomly from a word cloud from hell, with both sides spitting internet invective at one another like armies of Twitter bots — “cuck,” “snowflake,” “crisis actors,” “hick.” The hunted are a collection of white nationalists, Fox News fans, big-game hunters, and homophobes who wake up in the middle of the woods to find themselves being armed and then being shot at, as though every message board conspiracy theory they’d ever delved into were true. The hunters, led by Athena (Hilary Swank), are high-minded, high-income hypocrites who all take pride in their progressive conscientiousness (“Ava DuVernay just liked one of my posts!” is one of the quips that actually lands) while barely tamping down their vitriolic disdain. The film’s canniest insight is to have its vengeful pursuers insist on trying to get their prey to confess to their respective transgressions before they’re killed, because being told they’re right would be a truer reward than the self-righteous murders that inevitably follow.

The Hunt isn’t a total mishap, not with Gilpin being as good as she is and with Zobel’s gleeful aptitude for violence, but that’s what’s so exasperating about it. It has a habit of getting in its own way with trollish tendencies whenever it starts to build momentum. It’s regrettable that, despite all of its jabs at relevance, the movie has no desire to actually dig into the details of the anger felt by either side of the bloodsport event it imagines. In The Hunt , both sides are treated as equally foolish, South Park style, just snobs and rubes — which feels unbearably glib when the sins of one side are outrageously fictional and the sins of the other draw inspiration from real world examples like the Unite the Right rally and the Westboro Baptist Church. In order to present its political divide as a fundamentally cultural one, it settles on a group of characters who appear to have no direct skin in the game, and then treats the idea that might actually care anyway as unfathomable. For the people on screen, issues like racism and economic inequality amount to just cause for yelling, aside from the family of refugees rushed through a scene as an admission that there are people who have it bad, they’re just far away. It’s a privileged child’s view of current events, not to mention a conveniently white-skewing one.

The ideological incoherence of The Hunt is especially frustrating given that it’s heading to play in theaters alongside Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s rollicking Bacurau , an infinitely sharper story about the hunting of humans for entertainment, and proof that a movie can have something on its mind without surrendering its exploitation bona fides. In the film, a group of armed Americans (and the odd European) who are really desperate to shoot someone embark on a bit of murder tourism — but they go abroad, with their chosen target being a small town in the Brazilian sertão that they assume won’t be missed. It’s the town, not the killers, on which the narrative is centered, and it’s the town that emerges as its own vivid character, a pragmatically inclusive community with a storied history and a gritty determination to take care of its own that was established long before the hunters arrived. Bacurau is an anti-colonialist war cry, a suspensefully bloody romp, and an ode to a distinctively Brazilian outpost capable of standing fast in the face of all comers. One can only imagine what Trump would tweet about this movie — not that he’d ever be likely to watch it, given the subtitles.

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Speak No Evil remake currently has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than the original

The James McAvoy-led horror movie is a hit with critics

It's often rare for a remake to speak to audiences more than its original, but new horror movie Speak No Evil may have done just that after debuting to an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score.

The original Danish-language movie, which was released in 2022, has a score of 84% (based on 101 reviews), while the new Hollywood remake is currently sitting at 87% (based on 45 reviews).

Our own four-star Speak No Evil review praises the movie for "walking a thin line between honoring the original, treading its own path to justify its existence, and offering some choicely brutal surprises."

The Independent praises leading man James McAvoy for "delivering one of the most impressively repugnant performances of the year," while Time Out says the remake is "seriously unnerving in its own way."

However, not everyone is a fan. Slant Magazine writes that "this hollow attempt to turn a provocative showpiece into a crowd-pleaser makes you wonder if the filmmakers are actively disdainful of the original."

In the original movie, a Danish family meets a Dutch family while on holiday in Tuscany, Italy, who invites them to reunite at their home for a weekend sometime later. In the remake, the two families are American and English. In both movies, a weekend away in the countryside with new friends soon takes a sinister turn, but the two films differ most broadly in the final act. But no spoilers from us here…

Speak No Evil arrives in theaters on September 13. In the meantime, check out our guide to the other best upcoming horror movies still to come in 2024.

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I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.

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Transformers One First Reviews: The Best Transformers Movie Yet

Critics say josh cooley's animated prequel benefits from a dazzling visual style, fantastic voice performances, and a surprisingly thoughtful, emotionally resonant script..

TAGGED AS: movies , transformers

Maybe Transformers should always be animated? Outside of the rare occasion of Bumblebee , every live-action movie in the Transformers franchise has a Rotten score on the Tomatometer, whereas 1986’s Transformers: The Movie and now Transformers One are positive efforts in the eyes of critics. The first reviews of the latter, an animated prequel featuring the voices of Chris Hemsworth , Brian Tyree Henry , and Scarlett Johanson , are mostly raves. From its innovative animation to its emotional storytelling, Transformers One is exactly what you should expect it to be with a Pixar veteran at the helm.

Here’s what critics are saying about Transformers One :

Is this one of the best Transformers movies yet?

Transformers One is the best movie in the Transformers franchise since the 1986 original. — Rafael Motamayor, Slashfilm

There hasn’t been a Transformers film with as thorough and revealing an introduction to the opposed alien-robot factions as Transformers One . — Jeff Ewing, Collider

Transformers One is the best Transformers movie ever made. — Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

It’s the best Transformers movie ever made by a wide margin. — Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

Transformers One rejuvenates excitement for the franchise. It’s not only a great Transformers movie but a great movie in general. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

Consider this a franchise revitalized. — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

Transformers One ends up exceeding all expectations… It’s obvious that the most exciting future for Transformers lies in the realm of animation. — Andrew J. Salazar, Discussing Film

With so much that Transformers One gets right, there’s still that nagging feeling that we’ve been there, done that. — Leigh Monson, AV Club

(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)

How is the voice acting?

The central players all excel in developing complex characters that notably evolve with the events of the narrative. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

The voice cast is excellent overall. Jon Hamm seems to be having an especially great time as Sentinel Prime. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

It benefits from Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry’s spot-on voice performances… Their charming, brotherly chemistry helps elevate the characters. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry do a good job evoking the buddy-movie chemistry needed between Orion Pax and D-16, with much of the movie playing almost like an animated version of Tango & Cash . — Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry have some big shoes to fill as two of the most iconic voices in fandom… and trust me when I say, they fill those shoes well. — Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

The impressive stand-out of Transformers One is without a doubt Brian Tyree Henry as Megatron… He conveys emotions extremely well, taking Megatron to a whole different level. — Chalice Williams, Black Girl Nerds

Brian Tyree Henry is fantastic as D-16. — Rafael Motamayor, Slashfilm

Who better to play Bumblebee than Keegan-Michael Key?… He is hilarious in this film. — Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

How good does it look?

Despite the expert visual effects work done by Industrial Light & Magic, Digital Domain and others on the first five live-action Transformers films, ILM not only exceeds itself here in creating believable animated characters but makes a convincing case that photorealism is not the best aesthetic for bringing them to life on screen. — Todd Gilchrist, Variety

The gorgeous 3D-style computer animation is a wonder to behold throughout, from the character designs (these seem the most expressive Transformers yet)… to the varied settings that make the environments seem fully lived-in. There’s so much visual imagination on display that multiple viewings seem essential to take it all in. — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

It revitalizes the Transformers movies with a freshly animated look, similar to what Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem did. — Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

Transformers One is nice to look at. Visually, Industrial Light & Magic, the studio that did the effects for the live-action films, knocks it out of the park. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The animators at Industrial Light & Magic took on the unenviable challenge of bridging the gap between the quasi-realistic renderings of the live-action films’ Transformers and the emotively cartoonish models of more recent animated offerings… They add enough colorful touches and retro-futuristic flourish to allow the action beats to read as excitingly coherent rather than cluttered. — Leigh Monson, AV Club

Thanks to the ILM wizard’s live-action skills, the film looks as if shot with live-action cameras on an alien planet, giving it a cinematic look that feels grounded and tactile rather than overly polished and artificial as so many 3D-CG movies do nowadays. — Rafael Motamayor, Slashfilm

The computer-generated animation looks stunning on IMAX. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Are the action scenes any good?

The action is big and exciting and packs a wallop. — Kyle Anderson, Nerdist

It is filled with epic action sequences that not only help to drive the story forward, but are honestly just a lot of fun. — Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

Cooley’s staging and blocking of action is ever so meticulous. Multiple action sequences, in which the heroes constantly transform in and out of their vehicle modes mid-battle, are super imaginative and memorable in the finest of details. — Andrew J. Salazar, Discussing Film

The animation is at its best when it’s in constant motion, as with its stunning action sequences… The action scenes are exciting, never lasting long enough to become dull. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The race is a highlight. — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

If the battle finale eventually succumbs to the franchise’s customary bombastic overkill, it at least makes you care a little about who’s doing the fighting. — Neil Smith, Total Film

What about the script?

The writing team does a superb job of weaving established Transformers mythos into the shape of a character-driven narrative where it’s easy to like and care about our underdog protagonists. — Leigh Monson, AV Club

The movie is much more compelling than you’d think. — Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

The visuals, as impressive as they are, wouldn’t amount to much if Transformers One didn’t also have a well-crafted story, multi-dimensional characters, and witty dialogue that brings to mind Pixar at its best. And that’s something I never thought I’d say about a Transformers movie. — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

[It has] a surprisingly well-told story. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Transformers One is simply good storytelling. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

The reveals around the bots’ missing cogs, including thematic lessons around finding your own potential regardless of societal rules and limitations, are well scripted and hit home. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

Does it honor the lore of the franchise?

Not only does it explore untold lore and answer questions, there are a lot of Easter eggs and references to past Transformers projects. — Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

There are plenty of references to every era of Transformers , from the original cartoons to the Michael Bay movies. — Rafael Motamayor, Slashfilm

It’s distinctive while also paying tribute to the old cartoon show and 1986 film. It’s also set in the same timeline as the modern Transformer movies, but it’s distinct enough that you really don’t have to have seen any of them to enjoy it. — Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

In an era when so many franchise films aim for easy laughs with tongue-in-cheek jabs at their own existence… Transformers One feels so refreshing just by taking every bit of its connected history seriously. This might also feel miraculous to longtime Transformers fans. — Andrew J. Salazar, Discussing Film

Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity (as well as violent finality, in a few cases) that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date… Expectations won’t be subverted, but the film offers more nuanced portrayals of Cybertron’s heroes and villains than ever before. — Todd Gilchrist, Variety

Is it funny?

It’s full of comedy that largely lands, getting legitimate mileage out of simple actions like running away, or punches, thanks to smart timing and skilled vocal performances. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety. — Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

The film as a whole is frequently silly, I’d argue that’s preferable to the sophomoric, raunchy, occasionally racist humor of Bay’s live-action films. — Todd Gilchrist, Variety

The mix of lighthearted comedy and broad humor has the feel and tone reminiscent of an overly jokey MCU-style movie. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

The attempts at slapstick would have benefited from a more exaggerated style… Comedic moments feel like forced token gestures, leaning hard into kinetic hyperactivity instead of telling jokes that aren’t already stale before the punchline lands. — Leigh Monson, AV Club

When we get a stray joke or bit of slapstick in the second half, it feels completely at odds with the rest of the movie. — Kyle Anderson, Nerdist

Does it also get emotional?

It’s a fun, action-packed outing with surprisingly effective emotional resonance. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

[It has] one of the most — I can’t believe I’m saying this — heartbreaking moments ever seen in the Transformers franchise. — Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

It gives fans an origin story filled with heart and emotion. — Tessa Smith, Mama’s Geeky

You can’t help but get invested in the brotherhood between the two robots, and when they eventually turn on each other, it feels pretty epic. — Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network

The tragedy between Orion Pax and D-16 is never sidelined in Transformers One . — Andrew J. Salazar, Discussing Film

It feels both dramatically satisfying and emotionally engaging. — Neil Smith, Total Film

It’s exciting to watch a new installment in this franchise and actually feel something again. — Todd Gilchrist, Variety

Is it mostly aimed at younger, newer fans?

Transformers One feels specifically geared towards a crowd too young for a PG-13 rating, an audience that doesn’t have a relationship with these characters and are discovering these tropes and stories for the first time. — Leigh Monson, AV Club

Transformers One is a film that will add complexity and new emotion to the characters and factions that franchise fans love, while having enough dramatic heft for unfamiliar, new audiences alike. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

It offers detail, solid action, and narrative depth that longtime fans will appreciate while being a nice entry point for those who are newer to the world of Transformers . — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

This is still obviously a family-friendly animated film, but the best animated pictures can always find a way to explore mature topics as long as they treat their audiences with respect… Those walking in expecting a “children’s movie” will be shocked to see how far Transformers One goes with depicting violence. — Andrew J. Salazar, Discussing Film

Although Transformers One is a more family-oriented Transformers movie, it does not feel like it’s pandering to young children… This movie felt like it was made for everyone. — Jonathan Sim, ComingSoon.net

The early part of the movie is clearly aimed at a younger audience, which I thought was just okay. I’m not saying this is good or bad. I’m merely saying, it gives the movie a bit of an identity crisis. — Kyle Anderson, Nerdist

Are there any major problems?

There’s at least a trilogy’s worth of plot here in just one movie, and at times the pacing is simultaneously too slow as it crams all this worldbuilding and lore, and too fast as it rushes from set piece to set piece, storyline to storyline. — Rafael Motamayor, Slashfilm

The film’s biggest issue stems from the evolution of D-16… The suddenness of the pivot doesn’t make full sense given the character’s initial set-up. — Jeff Ewing, Collider

It rushes through D-16’s conflicted feelings, and I don’t fully believe the change… A bit more time spent on D-16 would’ve made the final moments more effective. Hopefully, the next movie will give us more. — Mae Abdulbaki, Screen Rant

If [Scarlett Johansson’s] character had been removed completely, it wouldn’t have been detrimental, as she didn’t contribute to the film. — Chalice Williams, Black Girl Nerds

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'Conclave's 96% Rotten Tomatoes Score Caused A Big Change in the Release Date

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Edward Berger's Vatican thriller Conclave , starring Ralph Fiennes , is getting an earlier release date. It will now hit theaters on October 25, a week earlier than initially planned. The movie, distributed by Focus Features, has already received strong acclaim during the fall film festival circuit, earning an impressive 96% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes .

In addition to the date change, Conclave will now open wide in 1,500 theaters. This shift aims to give the movie broader access to audiences over its opening weekend rather than sticking to its earlier, more limited release plan . While it won't be in as many theaters as Sony's Venom: The Last Dance , opening on the same date, it is positioned as an alternative (or counter-programming, for those who like the terminology) for older moviegoers seeking a different kind of cinematic experience.

The film had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, followed by an international screening at TIFF. It is also set to open the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 3 and will have its UK premiere at the London Film Festival on October 10. Written by Peter Straughan and based on Robert Harris ' novel, Conclave features a stellar cast that includes Stanley Tucci , John Lithgow , Isabella Rossellini and more. The story centers around Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes), who is thrust into a conspiracy after the sudden death of the Pope, uncovering a secret that could upend the Catholic Church.

Is 'Conclave' Worth Seeing?

Well, if the Rotten Tomatoes score doesn't convince you, why not let Collider's Jason Gorber give you his thoughts. In his stellar 9-out-of-10 review, Gorber hailed Fiennes' performance as "one of his best performances to date" and labels the movie as "profoundly intelligent, as it is highly entertaining".

Berger’s latest is a blast of brilliance, with a supremely compelling story driven by some astonishing performances . Fiennes, in a career of august characters, manages to outshine many of his most formidable roles, and the rest of the ensemble provides a stark sense of realism even within the heightened circumstances. This is a nourishing film, with deep ideas nestled within a puply, thriller structure. It’s a wonderful blend that’s both highly entertaining and profoundly intelligent. Bravo to the entire group that came together for this unique of circumstances – My vote goes towards celebrating Conclave , I hope you join in on this most noble of coalitions and cast yours in the same way.

For those as excited as we are to see Conclave , the movie is now releasing on October 25. Stay tuned to Collider for more.

Following the unexpected death of the pope, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with overseeing the secretive conclave to elect the next pope. As the process unfolds, he uncovers a conspiracy that could shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church.

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The hunt: 10 best damon lindelof projects, ranked according to rotten tomatoes.

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Happy Gilmore 2's Returning Star Confirms Happy & Virginia's Relationship Status

James mcavoy recalls replacing joaquin phoenix on split: “ditched it 2 weeks before they started”, m. night shyamalan’s next movie teased as trap nears global box office milestone.

The release of the new film The Hunt was met with widespread criticism due in no small part to the controversial nature of its plot, which involves human hunting. Though it was directed by Craig Zobel, it was co-written by Damon Lindelof, who also served as a producer.

RELATED: The Hunt: 10 Other Movies Inspired By "The Most Dangerous Game"

Lindelof has actually had quite a successful career in Hollywood as both a writer and a producer, bringing several high-profile films and television to the screen. From the new Star Trek films to hit television series such as The Leftovers and Watchmen , here are the ten best ranked according to Rotten Tomatoes .

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) 45%

Despite the fact that this film starred big names such as Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, it struggled to perform at the box office due in part to the fact that it received mostly negative reviews from critics. The plot is a little on the strange side, as the title suggests. That being said, the film does have some truly stunning visuals, the CGI is a major draw, and both Craig and Ford have a great deal of on-screen chemistry, their buff masculine personae working with rather than competing with one another.

Tomorrowland (2015) 50%

Tomorrowland - George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy

This ambitious science fiction film was co-written with Brad Bird, known for such films such as The Iron Giant, and is about an inventor who enters into a different dimension. As with so many big-budget projects, it features some truly stellar acting talent, including both Hugh Laurie and George Clooney, as well as breathtaking CGI. Unfortunately, it struggled at the box office both domestically and internationally, managing to make just over $200 million on a $180 million budget. It also received middling reviews from critics, who faulted the storytelling while praising the visuals.

The Hunt (2020) 54%

Betty Gilpin and Hilary Swank in The Hunt 2020

This most recent offering from Lindelof is about a group of people who are kidnapped and hunted by other humans. The film ignited criticism because of its political overtones—those being hunted are called “deplorabes"—and this caused its initial release date to be postponed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it did not make a profit, earning less than half of its initial budget of $14 million. Part of this was no doubt due to the tremendous controversy surrounding it, but it also no doubt stemmed from the lukewarm critics, who criticized its heavy attempts at satire.

World War Z (2013) 66%

This film is based on the very successful book by Max Brooks, son of the famous director Mel Brooks. However, it made some substantial changes to the novel. Rather than a wide cross-section of viewpoints as part of an oral history of events, the film focuses mostly on a single character, Brad Pitt’s Gerry Lane, who struggles to find a cure to the zombie virus.

RELATED: World War Z: 10 Differences Between The Book And The Film

Though it was not overwhelmingly approved by critics, it still managed to perform fairly well at the box office, earning about $540 million on a budget of at least $190 million.

Prometheus (2012) 73%

Prometheus , directed by Ridley Scott and co-written by Lindelof, with Jon Spaihts, is something of a prequel to Scott’s widely successful Alien franchise. In it, a group of humans explores the outer reaches of space in an attempt to discover the origins of humanity. It’s a strange and interesting film, with some scenes that are definitely horrifying. It was a modest success among both critics and audiences, earning a little over $400 million on a budget of $120 million. It also produced a sequel a few years later, entitled Alien: Covenant .

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) 84%

Though the new Star Trek films are more firmly associated with the director J.J. Abrams, Lindelof actually had a role to play in their creation as both a writer and a producer. Star Trek Into Darkness continues on the story begun in Star Trek , though this time introducing a new audience to the sinister character of Khan (played by the inimitable Benedict Cumberbatch). Though the film divided the fans, it was well-received by critics. It was mostly successful at the box office, earning $437 million on a budget of $190 million.

Lost (2004-2010) 85%

Jack, Kate and Hurley standing in the jungle on Lost

In the annals of television, there are few shows that can be compared to Lost . To this day, fans of the series continue to debate the series . The series ultimately ran for six seasons, with 121 episodes. Lindelof was one of the creators of the series along with J.J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber. He and Lieber also served as showrunners throughout the series’ run. The series was enormously popular —pulling in several millions of viewers for its entire run—and was also well-regarded by critics, who still regard as a landmark of television.

The Leftovers (2014-2017) 91%

The Leftovers , airing on HBO , tells the story of those left behind after 2% of the world’s population mysteriously disappears. It is based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, and Lindelof wrote the first episode. It was definitely one of the bleaker shows on television during its run, a reminder of the dark side of modern life, as well as how tenuous the bonds are that bind us all together. It was well-received by critics, and HBO would ultimately give the series three total seasons.

Star Trek (2009) 94%

Zachary Quinto & Chris Pine in Star Trek

Star Trek is one of the most venerable and popular franchises in popular culture. It has produced numerous television series, films, and books, including this attempt to reboot the franchise. Lindelof was one of the producers of the new film, which features the characters of the original series, but with a new cast, including Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock. Though it was well-received by critics, it was divisive for the fans of the franchise, and it was only moderately successful at the box office, earning $385 million on a $150 million.

Watchmen (2019) 95%

This series on HBO was created by Lindelof and is based on the popular series of comics produced by DC. Among others, it stars the truly phenomenal Regina King, who is always a highlight to watch, in both this series and others. Though it takes place in the same universe as the original comic book series, it depicts events that take place after it. The audience was acclaimed by critics and was a significant success for HBO. Though there were plans to continue, following Lindelof’s announcement that he had completed his story, it was rebranded as a limited series.

NEXT: 10 Other Movies With Human Hunting to Watch After The Hunt

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Horror

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 13, 2020
Betty Gilpin as Crystal; Ike Barinholtz as Staten Island; Wayne Duvall as Don; Ethan Suplee as Gary; Emma Roberts as Yoga Pants; Christopher Berry; Sturgill Simpson as Vanilla Nice; Kate Nowlin as Big Red; Amy Madigan as Ma; Reed Birney as Pop; Glenn Howerton as Richard; Steve Coulter as The Doctor

Home Release Date

March 20, 2020
Craig Zobel

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

The attack was as swift as it was brutal. It didn’t matter that they didn’t really know anything about their adversary: What they thought they knew was enough. Death was sudden and gruesome.

No, no, no. I’m not talking about the liberal elites hunting down their “deplorable” quarry in The Hunt . I’m talking about how people responded to rumors of the actual movie last September.

The Hunt was originally supposed to be released on Sept. 27, 2019. Two key factors “killed” the film, at least temporarily. First were two horrific mass shootings in early August (in Dayton, Ohio, and in El Paso, Texas, respectively). The second was the shellacking the film received from some prominent conservatives, including some tweets from a fairly famous Twitter user. Some assumed that The Hunt was a shocking, liberal elite revenge fantasy.

Few had seen the film at that point, of course. Many who had seen it suggested that the satirical horror film was actually taking on those liberal elites more than anybody. No matter, though: Some suggested the backlash was just too great for The Hunt to survive. “I believe this movie will never be released,” Republican strategist John Brabender told ITK .

But anyone familiar with Hollywood horror stories knows that no antagonist is ever truly dead. And so The Hunt shambled out of its open grave and is now in theaters.

So now that we’ve seen it, what’s the movie actually about? Well, technically, it’s … um, about liberal elites hunting down Jesus-loving, gun-toting MAGA-hat-wearing conservatives. But this satire’s own quarry isn’t so easy to pin down. It seems that in this hunt, it’s open season on everyone.

Positive Elements

We see a few of the hunted try to save each other with mostly dispiriting results.

Spiritual Elements

As one of the hunted cowers before his would-be killers, he tells one of them that they should “go to h—.” The hunter tells him that he doesn’t believe in such a place—being a part, he says snidely, of the “godless elite.” That scene is one of a handful of disparaging comments we hear uttered about faith and religion, especially Christianity, by the hunters.

Crystal and Gary, two of the hunted, hop on a train and discover the box car hides a family of apparent Islamic refugees. Gary believes the family are actors (including the baby one carries), and he snidely calls one of them “Muhammed.” When Crystal and Don (another hunted couple) pop a trunk and find a body, inside, Don misuses Jesus’ name in shock and dismay. “Nope,” Crystal says. “It’s this guy.”

Sexual & Romantic Content

Hunters discuss how one of them visited Haiti on a supposed humanitarian mission and got a woman pregnant there. “I hope she was pro-choice,” another hunter quips. We hear more cynicism about the man’s Haiti trip and some more jokes about his, ahem, extracurricular activities there.

Crystal’s top reveals a bit of her torso. An online video has some imagined sexual subtext to it.

Violent Content

Before moviegoers have even warmed up their theater seats, someone gets stabbed in the neck with a pen (blood spurts out of the severed artery) and has his eye gouged out with a stiletto heel. (We see the orbital organ, including the grotesque optic nerve, hanging from the shoe.) And really, it just goes downhill from there.

Someone falls into a pit filled with spikes and is impaled. Two people die via landmine: One essentially evaporates, while the other—or, at least, part of the other—gets hurled 20 or 30 feet away. Someone finds the victim, still living, with just the top half intact; entrails and organs hang out of her torso and waist. She still has the wherewithal to grab a gun and finish herself off, though. Two people are stabbed in the gut with a Cuisinart blade. A man has half of his head disgustingly blown off. (He’s just one of several people who die—often bloodily and gorily—via bullets or shotgun shells.)

Someone is killed after having his throat cut: Blood, of course, sprays cinematically. Another victim is shot with several arrows. (He runs with the weapons still sticking in various parts of his body, though the arrow that pierces his neck finally brings him down.) Someone’s skewered through the middle, but then survives long enough to be shot in the head. At least two people get blown to bits by grenades (though one such death, miraculously, takes place off-camera). Someone’s head is run over by a car. A victim is poisoned via powdered donut. Someone’s body is discovered with a knife sticking out of his forehead. A guy is shot, then battered with a pipe, then shot again. A man dies from some sort of gas. A champagne bottle is broken and used as a weapon.

We see some pretty frenetic fighting, with folks getting punched and kicked and hit in the privates. Someone’s stabbed in the shoulder with what might be a cooking thermometer. Trucks are wired to blow up. Blood spills, sprays and is sometimes literally mopped up. An innocent, surprisingly well-dressed pig gets gunned down.

We read a violent text message string referencing the Manor, where “deplorables” are hunted. We hear a really violent children’s story—a variation on the tortoise and the hare. A bullet hole in someone’s shoulder is painfully prodded.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear nearly 90 f-words (including several using the word “mother”) and about 15 s-words. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n”, “h—” and “p-ss”. God’s name is misused about 10 times (at least three of those with the word “d–n”), while Jesus’ name is abused another 10 times or so (often paired with the f-word). There’s a reference to the “n-word,” though that slur is not actually spoken. We see a middle finger flashed in a picture.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Someone discusses dealing with their problems through drinking and drugs. A rich guy in an airplane demands some champagne and discusses, at some length, a trio of $250,000 bottles of the bubbly. Someone rescues a bottle of very old champagne from certain destruction.

We hear that someone’s father was a methamphetamine dealer and addict, and that her mother died from a drug overdose. Someone guzzles champagne from the bottle. A couple of people smoke, and one discovers a ruse because she knows the price of cigarettes in Arkansas.

Other Noteworthy Elements

The hunters of The Hunt come across as pampered, inconsiderate jerks. For instance, one taunts the flight attendant serving him—asking her whether she’s ever had caviar (she hasn’t), then asking her to take his away because he just had some “last night.” We hear some debate about whether calling someone “black” is racist (National Public Radio says it’s OK, one says; but NPR is staffed primarily by white people, another counters), or whether wearing a kimono is cultural appropriation. We hear references to several political issues and some hostile (and sometimes profane) references to a certain resident of the White House.

Some of the hunted, though, are painted a bit like the hunters would paint them. Several spout conspiracy theories: One claims to be an expert because he exposes “truth” through his podcast (one with the word “Confederate” in its title) and comes across as fairly racist. Several people are accused of spreading misinformation online.

A woman drops her drawers and urinates by a set of train tracks. A man urinates by a tree.

Satire is hard to pull off in this touchy age of ours. We live in an era of Twitter rage and trigger warnings—some of which may be warranted, perhaps. But it can still have a chilling impact on public discourse and debate. In our society’s laudable desire to call out wrongdoing, some would say we’re tickling an Orwellian-like impulse for “right thinking,” a homogeny of acceptable expression that, ironically, involves very little thinking at all.

The Hunt leans hard into those Orwellian themes, complete with shirt-wearing pigs (a reference to George Orwell’s Animal Farm ). That gives The Hunt a more rightward tilt: The conservative “hunted” suffer their share of abuse in the movie, but it’s the progressive hunters who are most relentlessly (if not always effectively) mocked.

But ultimately, the movie’s not aiming at them, either. The ultimate quarry here seems to is society itself.

The problem isn’t that conservatives are “deplorable” or liberals are laughable: It’s that society as a whole can’t stop divvying them up as such. We (using the term loosely and broadly) look at someone, check a series of boxes based on how they look and talk and dress and vote and assume that we know them. The fact that so many people in this movie aren’t exactly who they seem appears itself to be a meta-statement about our culture today.

Those of us who call ourselves evangelical Christians understand how “judgey” the culture can be: We’ve been judged plenty. But let’s face it: We can easily judge those who don’t share our convictions just as quickly, and just as harshly.

Of course, there’s another irony lurking here: As a movie critic, it’s actually my job to be judgmental. But because I’ve spent plenty of time with this particular movie—I sat through the whole thing, in fact—I feel that I’m not rushing to judgment.

Whatever point The Hunt may want to make, or whatever value it might hope to have, is pretty much obliterated by its violence, just like so many of its characters. The blood and gore here are meant to be shocking and, at times, even funny—but instead they’re just gross. And that’s a strange and undercutting dichotomy in a film that encourages us to treat one another as people, and then treat its own people like so much meat.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Transformers One’s Cybertron-Sized Rotten Tomatoes Score Flirts with Franchise Record

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Transformers One has rolled out for the critics and the early reviews have propelled the animated adventure into a battle for the franchise’s best Rotten Tomatoes score. Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry’s upcoming origin story, which features the voice actors tackling young Optimus Prime (Orion Pax) and Megatron (D-16), respectively, registers 89% on the Tomatometer against 38 reviews, at the time of this writing. And that puts the new animated Transformers flick in a neck-and-neck race for the series’ highest RT rating ever.

Currently, the top spot is occupied by the 2018 live-action entry Bumblebee, which stars Hailee Steinfeld. The lovable yellow bug’s spin-off adventure registers 90% on the Tomatometer, against 252 reviews, and that gives the film a very tenuous lead against Transformers One . But once you get past those two films, Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t been exactly kind to the franchise. In fact, the Tomatometer dips almost 30 points between the No. 2 and No. 3 rankings on RT. Check out the series’ scores below:

Transformers Franchise's All-Time Highest Tomatometer Ratings:

Bumblebee (90%)
Transformers One (89%)
The Transformers: The Movie (62%)
Transformers (57%)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (52%)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (35%)
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Transformers One

Transformers One is an animated action-adventure movie that marks the first animated feature-length film for the series in decades. The film will be a prequel to the franchise, and will tell the story of Optimus Prime and Megatron in their early years, how they met, and a closer look at the war on their home planet, Cybertron.

While Transformers One won’t officially open in theaters until next week, fans can check out the film during its special advance screenings on Saturday, September 14. And according to MovieWeb’s review by Julian Roman, there’s definitely reason to get excited about this new iteration that is joining the series. Roman succinctly says: “Raise your expectations for the best Transformers film.”

Critics Can See There's More Than Meets the Eye

Transformers One is already eyeing massive box office returns over its opening weekend, in which the film’s forecast predicts a $40 million to $50 million premiere. And now, with the critics’ reviews comparing the new Transformers movie favorably to its own early reactions, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice might end up having a little more than the strange and unusual to deal with in cinemas. Todd Gilchrist of Variety writes:

“While still delivering the fun and excitement expected of Hasbro’s metamorphosizing robots, Transformers One approaches the well-known characters with a degree of nuance and complexity that marks the most sophisticated onscreen portrait of them to date.”

Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter also sings Transformers One’s praises by writing:

Besides the raucous, de rigueur action sequences, Transformers One provides numerous witty jokes of both the verbal and visual variety and -- surprise, surprise -- genuine emotion. Consider this a franchise revitalized.

The film’s crux lies with the relationship between young Orion Pax (Hemsworth) and D-16 (Henry), who will become bitter enemies, Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively. Mae Abdulbaki of Screen Rant says: “There’s a lot to love here — from the character dynamics to the thrilling action and gorgeous animation. It makes for an exciting origin story.” Jonathan Sim of ComingSoon.net unabashedly writes:

Transformers One is the best Transformers movie ever made.

And, finally, Andrew J. Salazar of Discussing Film scores Transformers One a nearly perfect 4.5/5: “Transformers One is exactly what the franchise needs right now. Director Josh Cooley delivers a riveting original story told with great reverence and a level of maturity that will bring fans of all ages together.”

Transformers One Director Dishes on the Film’s True Antagonist: ‘That Is the Most Important Thing'

Josh Cooley reveals the "real antagonist" in the upcoming film, Transformers One, and he says "that is the most important thing."

Special advance screenings of Transformers One drop on Saturday, September 14. Meanwhile, the rest of the fans can officially check out Chris Hemsworth’s praise-worthy performance alongside the voice talents of Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi — OMG, he’s playing Starscream — Laurence Fishburne and Jon Hamm when Transformers One officially begins its theatrical run on September 20.

And be sure to check out Transformers One’s official trailer No. 2 (below):

Chris Hemsworth

'The Hunt' reactions: Controversial new social satire is 'heavy-handed' but 'undeniably delivers the goods'

It was apparent going in that “The Hunt” would be jaw-droppingly controversial, given its plot: Liberal “elites” hunt and kill conservative “deplorables” for sport . But is it any good?

Predictably, reaction to the savage social satire – which finally hits theaters Friday after being shelved in the wake of mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas – is as sharply divided as the current political climate. Reviews are 54% positive on Rotten Tomatoes.

USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt praised the film as “ an equal-opportunity offender that forgoes partisanship to poke bloody, gory fun at everybody,” while also predicting it will “tick off those with a thin skin and without an open mind.”

“This action-drenched roller coaster of a film tries to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to generating a tidal wave of violence,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy writes. “But it undeniably delivers the goods when it comes to action and impudence.”

“There’s more to this hot potato than mere provocation ,” says Variety’s Peter Debruge, who notes that The Hunt “is a good deal smarter – and no more outrageous –— than most studio horror films.”

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Others were less convinced. " ‘The Hunt’ is not great satire or even a great film. It's an unstylish and heavy-handed horror-thriller that turns into a revenge gore-fest as it mocks everyone with a big clumsy paw ,” says Mark Kennedy of The Associated Press.

“The movie is not just lazy but a lie ,” says Slate’s Sam Adams. “It feels like the work of Hollywood liberals bending over so far backward to seem nonpartisan that they end up buying into the right-wing canard that the political divide and the class divide are one and the same.”

" 'The Hunt' lacks the courage of its presumed convictions , displaying no more than a determination to make as much cash as possible by exploiting national divisions less covetous individuals are despairing of rather than monetizing,” Kenneth Turan of Los Angeles Times wrote.

But critics were united in their love for Betty Gilpin (“GLOW”) as a distrusting Afghanistan vet who fights back.

Gilpin plays the heroine Crystal “with almost sociopathic cool in an inspired and strange performance that splits the difference between Linda Hamilton and "No Country for Old Men" baddie Anton Chigurh,” says IndieWire’s David Ehrlich.

“ The movie’s secret weapon and its saving grace,” writes Monica Castillo of RogerEbert.com.

The Hunt says it’s cleverly skewering everyone. Don’t fall for it.

The self-styled provocative bloodbath is a masterclass in botched satire.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The Hunt was controversial before it was released — before, in fact, its release was delayed — and its marketing has aggressively played up the controversy , proclaiming that with this movie, “everyone is fair game.” It’s a movie about rich liberals who hunt working-class conservatives for sport, kind of. It’s about red versus blue, left versus right, elite versus salt of the earth. In this world, there are two kinds of people: rich snooty hypocritical globalist snowflakes who live in fancy houses; and gun-obsessed, racist hicks from places ranging from Staten Island to Georgia.

And here’s the big twist: Everybody takes a drubbing! Everyone gets made fun of! It’s hilarious; it’s provocative; it’s satirical!

Let me be blunt: If The Hunt is what passes for satire in 2020, as I think it may, then we’re all — pardon my French — completely screwed. It’s a movie that fundamentally misunderstands what satire can do, the function it fills, and the way it works; it’s the cinematic equivalent of the guy on Twitter that makes an unnecessarily rancid joke, and then when people get upset at him, angrily tweets about how nobody understands satire.

Naw, man, it’s not satire. It’s just senseless.

What is satire? It’s humorous or ironic. It exaggerates and ridicules. It seeks to expose the follies of a group or of society at large, usually political. And, most importantly, it has a goal: to shame people into change, or action.

Perhaps the most famous satirical work of all time is Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “ A Modest Proposal ” (full title: “A Modest Proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick”), which proposed that poor Irish people should sell their children to the rich as food in order to ease their money problems.

Swift, obviously (I hope), wasn’t actually proposing this. Instead, he was essentially writing in the voice of those who held cruel attitudes toward the poor, while also mocking inhumane British policies toward the Irish. The premise was that those who read it would recognize fragments of those views and understand, by way of Swift’s hyperbole, how ridiculous and cruel the ideas were. “A Modest Proposal” lays a template for modern satire, a rhetorical device designed not just to repeat the exaggerations of the ideas people mindlessly spew, but also show why they’re ridiculous.

And that is precisely why The Hunt fails. Rather than exaggerate the ideas it aims to skewer, it just repeats them doggedly, like a parrot without comprehension. Rather than dig at a particular behavior or mindset causing our national division, The Hunt acts like the symptoms are the problem — as if the slogans and bywords and hot-button phrases we slog through in the media are what deserve ridicule, in equal measure. It verges, if not plunges, straight into nihilism. What a waste.

The Hunt is empty, shallow, and devoid of anything approaching actual satire

I’d feel bad about spoiling the “twist” of The Hunt , except it’s barely a twist. So if you’re hell-bent on seeing the movie and don’t want to be spoiled, avert your eyes. Otherwise, read on.

In essence, here’s the plot, which reveals itself in pieces: Some fevered corner of the right-wing internet has concocted the notion that rich liberals, the kind who work in glassy offices and own vacation homes, round up a bunch of “deplorables” every year and hunt them for sport. This is silly (if only because the stereotypical liberal isn’t into guns), but it’s so silly that those selfsame liberals make jokes about going hunting in a group text to one another, which then gets exposed to national media somehow, which then reinforces the idea that this is actually happening. And so, those liberals decide, as long as people think they hunt deplorables for sport, they might as well actually do it. Right?

I mean, no. But this movie doesn’t believe anyone subscribes to concepts like “decency” and “human dignity” and “the milk of human kindness.” The closest thing to a hero in The Hunt is Crystal (an admittedly terrific Betty Gilpin, who is solely responsible for this film receiving any stars at all), a vet who wakes up in a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere with 11 strangers after being kidnapped and drugged, and has to find her way out while being hunted by snipers. She is, as you might have guessed, more than up to the task — even when she fights her way toward a confrontation with sleek, smug, liberal mastermind Athena (Hilary Swank).

Everyone else in the movie is lousy, though — dismissive, angry, violent, ready to murder at a moment’s notice. You could argue this is the movie’s way of satirizing “cancel culture” by exaggerating it a little (those who compare “cancelation” to actual murder might even dispute the idea that it’s exaggerated). But the movie isn’t satirical at all. It isn’t aiming to expose silliness in order to shame people into changing their mindsets. It’s not deftly pointing out the attitudes that lead to rancid divisions, or exposing the dangers of easy generalizations and swift judgments; instead, the movie just leans into those judgments and generalizations, over and over again.

There is the kernel of something interesting lodged in The Hunt that could have been explored — the idea that, by claiming something is true, fringe media might coax that thing into being, thereby both putting itself in jeopardy and also granting itself the joy of confirming its own suspicions. There’d be something intriguing about a satirical movie that shows how there’s a danger to the echo chambers we leave ourselves in, no matter your political persuasion. I’d have loved to see that movie.

Hilary Swank and Betty Gilpin in The Hunt.

But this potentially interesting idea handled so badly in The Hunt that it’s hard to grant the movie any serious consideration. It’s a sledgehammer of a film without a single original thought. It tries very hard to skewer everyone. Not offend them, in the way something like South Park might have; just repeat a lot of slogans you can easily read on the Internet.

The Hunt ’s (delayed) release, as its luck would have it, comes squarely in the middle of a pandemic that’s shutting down cultural institutions and coaxing people to stay away from crowded places, like movie theaters. So it’s possible that the movie won’t be more than a blip on the broader conversation. And thus its inanity will, in all likelihood, be contained.

But since it’s touting itself as “the most controversial film of the year,” in which “no side is spared,” a “no-holds-barred takedown of red and blue states alike,” it’s fair game whether or not anyone sees it. No side is spared and no holds are barred because no shots are fired in The Hunt . It’s empty, juvenile, and pointless. Satire can be done well at the movies; The Hunt is so pleased with its offensiveness that, like the worst self-proclaimed provocateurs, it just falls flat on its face.

The Hunt opens in theaters on March 13. On March 20, it became available on a wide variety of on-demand services, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime and FandangoNow.

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We Live in Time world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and receives its first UK screening at next month's BFI London Film Festival .

Following its first reviews, We Live in Time has landed a strong 88% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews to date. And from the sounds of it, we might want to be prepared for an emotional journey.

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"The conceit of Nick Payne’s original screenplay isn’t particularly novel, but scrambling its love story out of order allows We Live in Time to make the most of its gentle touch, if only because its hands are wrapped around our necks from the moment starts."

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"It's such a joy to watch two such assured and natural performers allowed the room to exercise both movie star and actor muscles as well as showcase their ease with both comedy and drama."

"None of this works of course without the right key cast and Garfield, who worked 16 years ago with Crowley in Boy A, and Pugh, who seemingly can do just about anything, could not be more appealing and believable."

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"Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias' memories will have become our memories."

"With Pugh and Garfield leading this tremendous love story, We Live in Time becomes one of the best movie romances in years, and proves that few filmmakers can present the power of love quite like Crowley can."

Following its world premiere, Garfield responded to the viral horse meme that became a social media favourite last month.

"I hadn't heard from him since our shoot day but I pray he makes an appearance 'cause without him, we really are nothing," he joked. "Yeah, no-one would be aware of this film if it wasn't for that f**king horse."

We Live in Time is released in US cinemas on October 11 and in UK cinemas on January 1, 2025.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.

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Mads Mikkelsen ’s face suggests weathered, weary iciness: slit-like eyes, thin lips, skin pulled tightly across high cheekbones. Perhaps that’s why the Danish actor — who is best known to American audiences as the bad guy in “Casino Royale,” and currently plays Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s “ Hannibal ” — is so often typecast as a villain.

Thomas Vinterberg ’s new drama, “ The Hunt ,” allows Mikkelsen to go beyond appearances and showcase his versatility. Wearing wire-frame glasses, his blond hair combed forward, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kindly daycare employee who is falsely accused of exposing himself to a child. His performance — which won Best Actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival — is a nuanced portrait of a fundamentally decent man grappling with a world that has decided to treat him indecently.

“The Hunt” begins with Lucas leading a contented (though not exactly perfect) life in a small town. A teacher by training, he has been left jobless by the closing of the local school; now he works in a daycare, looking after kids during the day and drinking with their parents in the evening. He radiates a sort of quiet, reserved warmth. His caring is genuine, and inspires others to care about him; friends worry that he’s lonely, living all by himself in the house he once shared with his son and ex-wife.

Everything changes, however, when — in a moment of anger — one of Lucas’ charges tells the daycare owner he sexually abused her. “The Hunt” doesn’t play any is-he-or-isn’t-he games with the accusation; it’s clear to us from the start that it’s a lie. While the unsuspecting Lucas goes about his work, the daycare scrambles to investigate. A child psychologist is brought in. Damage control is planned.

Finally, Lucas’ boss brings him into her office to tell him about what’s been going on behind his back; however, she refuses to reveal the name of the accuser or the nature of accusation. Lucas is told to take a few days off while the matter gets sorted out. The parents are all called to the daycare and told about the accusation.

From there, the accusation snowballs. Given a vague list of “symptoms” of sexual abuse — everything nightmares to moodiness — the parents all become convinced that Lucas has molested their children. If it weren’t played so straight, “The Hunt” could be taken as a satire of overprotective parenting; when the accuser attempts to recant, it’s interpreted as a sign of the severity of Lucas’ abuse.

Things only get worse when the authorities refuse to charge him due to an overwhelming lack of evidence. Instead of vindicating him, this leads the community to believe that a predatory pedophile has been allowed to roam free in their town.

This is where “The Hunt” arrives at its real subject: false guilt. Lucas is treated like a criminal by his community; his innocence is irrelevant. With subtle control of his face and voice, Mikkelsen conveys the inner turmoil of a man who is being forced to feel guilty about a crime that never happened.

“The world is full of evil — but if we hold on to each other, it goes away,” says one character toward the end of the film. The words are meant to comfort, but instead, they distress. “The Hunt” shows a community banding together against an individual; in the guise of making evil “go away,” they commit evil themselves.

This is thematically rich material; unfortunately, like a few too many dramas from the past decade, “The Hunt” resists expressive uses of style, opting instead for gently bobbing handheld camerawork. It’s an actor-friendly approach — face-focused, with minimal set-up time — but it ends up limiting the movie to the quality of its performances. It can only convey what the actors are conveying with their voices and faces — nothing more.

Admittedly, the actors manage to convey quite a bit, often subtly. Vinterberg — who broke through with “ The Celebration ” (1998), which also dealt with child molestation, but whose arthouse cred was eroded by a couple of critical flops (“It’s All About Love,” “ Dear Wendy “) — has settled into being a capable director of actors. Along with Mikkelsen’s leading role, “The Hunt” also boasts standout turns from newcomer Annika Wedderkopp as Lucas’ accuser and Vinterberg regular Thomas Bo Larsen as the friend whose rejection hurts Lucas the most. However, one often wishes for counterpoint — for the camera to play off of the performances instead of merely recording them.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is a critic for the digital film magazine Notebook, published by Mubi.com . With Christy Lemire, he co-hosted the television program “Ebert Presents: At the Movies.”

Lars Ranthe as Bruun
Ole Dupont as Godsejer / Advokat
Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas
Annika Wedderkopp as Klara
Alexandra Rapaport as Nadja
Anne Louise Hassing as Agnes
Thomas Bo Larsen as Theo
Susse Wold as Grethe
Thomas Vinterberg
Tobias Lindholm

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COMMENTS

The Hunt
Rated: 6/10 • Oct 4, 2023. The Hunt is a brilliantly dark satire on today's political views of the world. It's meant to be one of the most divisive films of the last few years, and it ...
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Christian A Top 10 movie of all time. Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/15/24 Full Review John A Near perfection up until the last few scenes that unintelligently and frustratingly ...
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Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Oct 7, 2022. M.N. Miller Ready Steady Cut. The Hunt is a clever, gory good time. In a perverse way, it's about unity and coming together. Full Review ...
The Hunt movie review & film summary (2020)
March 20, 2020. 4 min read. 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. The incendiary film, which caused much online handwringing last fall, was eventually shelved after the president weighed in with an uninformed opinion.
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The Hunt is a 2020 American action horror film [a] directed by Craig Zobel and written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof.The film stars Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, and Emma Roberts. Jason Blum was a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner, along with Lindelof. [4] Zobel and Lindelof have said that the film is intended as a satire on the profound political divide between ...
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In August 2019, the theatrical release of Craig Zobel's The Hunt was indefinitely delayed. This was the result of a controversy in the wake of the movie's first trailer (which admittedly did ...
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The Hunt, in many ways, is the ultimate example of how such a scenario -- a stray tweet, a dredged-up aspect of one's past, an inopportune joke gone wrong -- can escalate to the point where it ...
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It's noticeably violent, kicking off with lots of shock deaths and scenes, before turning into a female-led revenge thriller towards the climax. Aside from Hilary Swank, most of the cast are unknown but they do a pretty good job here. It's not an amazing film but it did entertain me throughout. 9/10.
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Don your wizard robes and get your tickets now to relive the magic of Harry Potter at a movie theater near you. In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, a group of elites gathers for the very first time at a remote Manor House to hunt ordinary Americans for sport. But the elites' master plan is about to be derailed because one of ...
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The Hunt Review: The Controversy is More Interesting Than the Movie. There's an odd scene early on in HBO's Watchmen where an episode of an in-show drama, American Hero Story, is proceeded by a comedically gratuitous trigger warning. The Hunt, a controversial Blumhouse horror-thriller that was cancelled after the mass shootings in Ohio and ...
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The Hunt
Summary A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son's custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by a lie. Drama. Directed By: Thomas Vinterberg. Written By: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm.
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The Hunt leans hard into those Orwellian themes, complete with shirt-wearing pigs (a reference to George Orwell's Animal Farm). That gives The Hunt a more rightward tilt: The conservative "hunted" suffer their share of abuse in the movie, but it's the progressive hunters who are most relentlessly (if not always effectively) mocked.
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Thomas Vinterberg 's new drama, " The Hunt," allows Mikkelsen to go beyond appearances and showcase his versatility. Wearing wire-frame glasses, his blond hair combed forward, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kindly daycare employee who is falsely accused of exposing himself to a child. His performance — which won Best Actor at this year's ...
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The Hunt (2020) Fan Reviews and Ratings Powered by Rotten Tomatoes Rate Movie. Close Audience Score. The percentage of users who made a verified movie ticket purchase and rated this 3.5 stars or higher. Learn more. Review Submitted. GOT IT. Offers SEE ALL OFFERS. APPLE PAY WEDNESDAY image link ...

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The Hunt Review: A Sharp, Even-Handed Satire That’s Also Gory Fun

The Hunt finds ways to both be grounded in the real world, and impressively silly.

If you have strong political views, but can also laugh at yourself, you’ll enjoy The Hunt.

Betty Gilpin delivers an excellent performance as part of a well-utilized ensemble.

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