YMMV / The Hunt (2020)

• Accidental Aesop: Whether it was intentional or not, the fact that Athena and the rest of her friends get fired for joking in a group text about hunting and killing conservatives can be seen as having two important Aesops. The first is being careful about what you put down in writing whether it be a text message or something else like social media. Once it is there, it can be seen by everyone and you can't always tell the intended tone of what is written since the text is emotionless. The second one is to be careful about what you joke about in a professional work environment. Even if you are simply joking, when you write or say something as dark like what Athena and her friends said, it can still be misconstrued as a serious thing or likewise a company and/or place of employment may not find it appropriate at all to make a joke about something that subject. They especially won't like it if it reflects badly on their corporate image.
• Complete Monster: Athena Stone is a businesswoman who, after a joke she made about hunting people for sport got her fired, decided to hunt people for real. Introduced killing one of her captives who woke up early by stabbing him in the eye, Athena watches as the other eleven captives are hunted and killed by her fellow hunters. When one of the captives, Crystal, kills the other hunters, Athena tricks her into killing Don, who was either another captive or one of Athena's hunters. When Athena is confronted by Crystal, it's revealed that the captives were critics of the Hunters who they deemed as "Deplorables" that needed to die, but that Crystal was chosen because Athena took her criticisms personally and not because she was deplorable. Athena proves to be nothing more than a narcissistic sadist, blaming her critics for her horrible actions, and is apathetic to the fact that she may have kidnapped the wrong Crystal.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Some have commented that Crystal's emotionally detached behavior and rather unusual reactions when killing people may possibly hint at some form of PTSD, presumably as a result of her background as a military vet.
• Iron Woobie: Crystal starts as an Iron Woobie, but evolves into a badass Action Survivor.
• Jerkass Woobie: Most of the kidnapped conservatives, except Gary, Trucker, Big Red, and Bandana Man who are huge examples of Asshole Victim. Yoga Pants might be a straight-up Woobie since with what little we have to go by of her, she seemed pretty kind.
• Misaimed Fandom: The hunters out themselves as whiny, spoiled, out-of-touch classists, predators, and casual racists who choose to cruelly hunt down and kill a group of other human beings for no other reason than their own hurt feelings at "cancel culture" consequences (after all, no one seemed to actually suffer from the fallout of the text leaks). Despite this, some viewers actually root for them, as many of the hunted are portrayed without much sympathy that it's much easier to side with the hunters.
• Narm:
  • Crystal's twist on the rabbit and turtle race. Between the music, the general tone of the movie and Crystal's behavior you know from the start it's going to be twisted for shock value, depriving it of any possible effect, and really adds nothing to the characterization or the story. All in all, it feels like padding and trying too hard to make Crystal look badass, making her look edgy instead.
  • Crystal's weird wide-eyed looks in the middle of combat, when she is not doing a "meh" face. It's meant to make her looks like a badass in the Arnold Schwarzenegger Commando way, but it also makes her look like they used the takes when the actress was mugging at the camera.
  • Athena "I make grilled cheese with gruviere" bit. In a better movie, with better characterization or some personality, it might have actually work, here it feels just lifted from a checklist to make the villain look somewhat classy and different.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Of the "see how controversial it is for yourself" kind. The film was initially pulled after several real-life shootings and criticism from then US President Donald Trump; when it was finally released in 2020, all of its marketing was based around the controversy. Whether this tactic would have worked had the COVID-19 Pandemic not affected the entire movie industry at the time of its release is unknown, though the movie still opened in a lowly 5th place.
• One-Scene Wonder: Randy, Trucker, Yoga Pants, and Target are among the first victims of the hunt, but all of them manage to get somewhat impressive or sympathetic moments in their limited screen time.
• Rooting for the Empire: The film makes it clear that many of the hunted aren't overly sympathetic, with abrasive personalities and backstories that include participation at homophobic rallies, xenophobia, and big-game hunting. As a result, some viewers found it difficult to side with them and even supported the hunters. Most take a third option and just hope everybody dies.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Trucker. Due to showing some heroism in trying to help the others and being an Egomaniac Hunter being hunted himself, he could have had more of a storyline instead of dying at the beginning.
  • Crystal in general, due to the refusal of the movie to make her take any kind of stance in the movie, not even a "truth is in the middle" one, just react in disagreement to others. She comes off just as contrarian, and with the overall message that she is right simply because she can beat down others.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Some critics accused the final twist that Crystal, whose own political views are never clearly stated, is not actually the right-wing extremist the liberals were targeting of being a total cop-out that retroactively keeps the film from being as hard-hitting and thought-provoking as it wants to be, as literally anyone can just latch onto her as a hero to root for with zero questioning of whether their own views match up with hers.
  • Some have also said that the movie could have delved into the psychology of rightists and leftists, and had sympathetic characters on both sides. Instead, the movie chose to exaggerate and demonize both sides, while making the lead character apolitical and the Only Sane Man around.
  • Richard is condescending, classist and racist, only coming short of using actual slurs, and he feels much closer to the "deplorables" than the other members of the hunters. It could have been something interesting to explore, or at least acknowledge, but it doesn't even seem intentional
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: One of the bigger complaints the movie gets is that, in its attempt at satirizing both the right and the left, it turns both sides into negative caricatures that you'd be hard-pressed to root for either side and that the one character even remotely sympathetic, Crystal, is not actually politically aligned, making the attempts at satire come across more as demonization.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Liberty is supposed to be the butt of a joke by being trapped by her own logic into agreeing to let herself be killed, rather than ask to be treated differently than a man. Except it can instead come off as a noble refusal to compromise her principles even in the face of death.
  • Similarly on the other side, there's Dead Sexy, who is given the most excruciating and drawn-out death in the film and still manages to be pretty badass in how she ultimately goes out.

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