YMMV / The Hunter

• Acclaimed Flop: The film has a good Rotten Tomatoes score and got nominated for almost every big award the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts had to offer that year, but it only grossed about 1.2 million dollars in theaters.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Are the loggers big talkers who are harmless deep down or murderous thugs who are responsible for some or all of the tragedy that befalls the Armstrong family?
  • Is the rival hunter a monster who thinks nothing of killing people and animals alike or a Punch-Clock Villain whose bark is worse than his bite and who would have let Martin go after finding the tiger's den? It's implied that he set the fire at the Armstrong home but if he did so, it seems odd that Bike escaped unharmed and Sass didn't when they were sleeping right next to each other when the rival hunter broke into the house. He also looks uncomfortable a few times during his confrontation with Martin, but is that out of concern about how his prisoner might turn the tables or guilt about holding him at gunpoint and possibly planning to kill him later? The former possibility would make his role in the fire less likely.
• Award Snub: The film is widely regarded as a riveting Drama/Thriller, but it lost on every nomination it got at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, and all four acting categories) besides Best Cinematography and Best Original Music Score. It didn't get a single nomination from the American Academy.
• Awesome Music: The film snagging Australia's Best Original Music Score award is an indication of how stirring the soundtrack is.
• Catharsis Factor: After seeing Doug the logger get away with being a bullying thug for most of the movie, the moment where Martin drops his peaceful academic act long enough to choke Doug for several seconds can feel satisfying.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Most of the film follows Martin, alone on the hunt, but a couple of the characters he spends time with between hunts are particularly popular.
  • While some fans consider Martin's interactions with the Armstrong family to be clichéd Padding, there's rarely a bad word to be said about Wise Beyond Their Years Sass (whose performer got an AACTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress despite her youth) and her Cute Mute brother Bike.
  • Jack Mindy, due to the way that he's generally friendly but not entirely trustworthy, and how he's played by Sam Neill.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: Some fans wish the deleted scenes showing Jack Mindy struggling to express his feelings toward Lucy and being bullied into helping the loggers had stayed in, given how mysterious his character feels in the final cut.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans feel that the fatal fire at the Armstrong home and/or Martin going through with killing the tiger is an Audience-Alienating Ending and would prefer not to acknowledge those events.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans prefer to think that Lucy and Katie survive the fire at the Armstrong house and are just in hiding, as little support as there is for that theory.
• Moe: Both Armstrong kids are utterly adorable and inspire protective feelings from Martin and the audience due to Sass being a wide-eyed Cheerful Child who is always asking questions and clearly misses her dad and Bike's Cute Mute attitude. Their mother eventually inspires some of this as well with her playful grins and Wide-Eyed Idealist attitude once she stops getting high on prescription meds to deal with grief over her lost husband and starts opening up to Martin and paying more attention to her kids.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Martin discovering the burned down house and then hearing from Jack that Lucy and Sass didn't make it.
  • Martin shooting the tiger. And mourning her death by cremating her, putting her ashes in Jarra's water bottle and releasing them into the wind. Have fun crying.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The warning that rival companies are sending hunters to compete with Martin and kill the tiger is interesting and seems to be confirmed when someone sabotages and monitors Martin in the mountains (plus how Jarrah worried a stranger was following him in the Back Story). However, the only rival hunter to show up works for Martin's employer and is only sent in late in the film, when it seems like Martin is becoming unreliable. It's implied the saboteur following Martin was either Jack (due to his suspicions about Martin's motives) or an environmentalist wanting to protect the tiger. This can feel puzzling and unsatisfying since Jack doesn't appear to know about the tiger and would have known that a human could take the memory card from the highly conspicuous camera trap to avoid being caught on film, the two environmentalists previously expressed contempt for snares like the kind used to bait the camera trap, and none of them are likely to have followed and murdered Jarrah.