‘The Hunt’ pits red vs. blue — violently
NEW YORK – Last fall, the violent satire “The Hunt” became ensnarled by some of the very politics it so playfully parodies.
Universal Pictures pulled “The Hunt” from release after a series of deadly shootings and wave of rightwing criticism, including from President Trump. He called it a movie “made in order to inflame and cause chaos.” Conservative commentators came out in force against it. Fox News’ Dan Bongino declared that “the Hollywood hate machine appears to be taking its anti-Trump derangement syndrome to disturbing new levels.”
Now, the makers of “The Hunt” want a do-over. And they feel they have a movie worthy of not a second chance but a legitimate first impression.
The latest from the low-budget, high-impact horror production company Blumhouse Productions, “The Hunt” — which opened in theaters Friday — isn’t the liberal screed it was accused, sight unseen, of being. It’s a heightened, bipartisan farce that puts the red-vs.-blue vitriol of social media into a bloody action-movie blender.
The film, written by Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “Lost”) and Nick Cuse, is a loose take on “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which wealthy liberals kidnap a dozen “rednecks” and “deplorables” to hunt on a private preserve. That may sound one-sided — its summary helped stoke the controversy — but “The Hunt” lampoons the left as much (if not more so) than the right.
It’s an absurdist melee in which liberals smugly brag of a tweet liked by Ava DuVernay and shout “Climate change is real!” while hunting their prey, and conservatives blame “crisis actor” migrants and “godless elites.”
For anyone in the film spouting conspiracy theory or one-sided rhetoric, well, things don’t end well.
“The Hunt” may have gone from the frying pan into the fire. It opened in theaters just as coronavirus fears were spiking in the U.S. But its filmmakers are just happy “The Hunt” is seeing the light of day.
“It’s coming out on Friday the 13th. It already is a zombie. It died, and it is now back to life,” said Lindelof, who’s also a producer on the film. “I feel like it’s a huge victory that it’s just being released. Everything else is gravy.”
Universal initially pulled ads for “The Hunt” last year after a pair of shootings on Aug. 3, one at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the other in downtown Dayton, Ohio. The timing wasn’t right for a movie that conflated gun violence with sport. Once the movie became a target of political debate, the Sept. 27 release date was canceled. Jason Blum, founder and chief of Blumhouse and a producer on “The Hunt,” says that decision was unanimous.
“But it was always the plan to bring it back,” says Blum, who adds “not one frame, not one line” of the film has since been changed. “Everybody jumped to conclusions about what the movie was and nobody had seen the movie.”
Still, the backlash caught the filmmakers off guard.
“I know this sounds ridiculous in hindsight, but I was genuinely surprised when what happened happened,” Lindelof said. “I’m not someone who views myself as a provocateur. I knew that this movie was playing in quote-unquote ‘dangerous’ territory, but I didn’t think that the movie was in and of itself dangerous or was advancing some sort of dangerous message.”
Made for about $15 million, “The Hunt” was inspired in part by Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” Lindelof and Cuse were jolted by its combination of social satire, thriller and horror. They endeavored to channel the extreme divisions of American politics — and their own liberal biases — into something that audiences from both sides of the aisle could laugh at.
Universal has revamped the marketing for “The Hunt,” making its satirical nature more evident and playing up the past controversy. Trailers call it “the most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen.”
Craig Zobel, the film’s director, thinks the uproar was, in its way, perfect.
“We were living through a version of what happens in ‘The Hunt,’ in a way,” Zobel said. “The movie has kind of proved its own thesis.”