Hunter Hunter is an odd case. On one hand, much of the first two acts had me asking all sorts of questions – what I thought were the good kind – and therefore kept me in pretty solid suspense. On the other hand, none of those questions seemed to matter to the filmmaker by the end.
Some SPOILERS below
Joseph (Devon Sawa), his wife Anne (Camille Sullivan), and their daughter Renee (Summer H. Howell) live in a rather isolated area in the middle of the woods together. A wolf that they suspect has been on the prowl in forest before returns, and their comfortable, albeit remote way of living is put at risk.
The ending of Hunter Hunter is much-hyped, and while it’s certainly stomach-churning and a feat of really great practical FX, it also neglects much of the rest of the narrative. This would make a much tighter short. Linden owes a debt to The Last House on the Left, but that film’s slow burn was all focused on its singular ending. Here there’s so much misdirection that it becomes clear that it’s filler rather than sleight of hand.
I have issues other than the ending: the tonal shifts to the “quirky” rangers are from a different film; in fact, those rangers, who get a decent amount of screen-time, don’t really deserve to be an emotional core, which they are at least partially, in the final 20 minutes; why does Anne insist on taking Lou (Nick Stahl) on the sled instead of in her car?; does Lou really just park his car on the side of the road to go…do his thing…? That seems, I don’t know, both convenient and a bit dumb; if we’re frequently being reminded that Renee is smart, why doesn’t she really do anything smart (or…anything)?; those rangers distract from the core story.
And what is the core story? It’s about a family coming apart at the seams, partially because of the secrets they keep from one-another. At first. It’s about a series of grisly murders. Kind of. It’s about the fight for survival. Eventually. The threads are just too loose.
I like the building tension in acts 1 and 2. Who is killing these people and why? How is the wolf connected? Why are the rangers so weirded out that Anne lives alone yet is so afraid? But in the end, none of these things actually matter. There are answers given, but they’re so simple as to be just brushed by. None of this is actually mystery. It’s a way to get to that ending.
And what about Renee? If you remove her from the story this thing completely works. She’s there to incite the ending only. Sure, she teaches her mom how to skin the deer, but couldn’t Anne just as well do that on her own? Okay, we’d lose the tension of Anne wanting to leave, but ultimately, that also doesn’t matter. The story would/could proceed as it’s charted without that beat.
Hunter Hunter is, as the title implies, about the hunter and the hunted. It’s about wolves and people – predators. It’s about how Anne eventually becomes the wolf. She finds her inner wolf, her own hunter, and kills “for” her family. Not bad at all…except that Anne spends most of the first two acts listening for a radio reply and, rather than building towards her conclusion, just steps out onto that stage. The shift is grisly and horrifying, but it doesn’t track.
There’s some great off-screen moments (one in particular just before that climax), and good beats in the woods. I like the crosscut when Renee leaves her father behind. The actors are in it. But it’s tough to shake the nagging feeling that, if this were a 30 minute film, staying focused on the three leads only it would really be something special.
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