Blumhouse's The Hunt

I find it very difficult to make political satire work effectively.

Satire is parody in general. The problem with this is that they're trying to play it entirely seriously instead of something like Dr. Strangelove (a commentary on MAD and how gung-ho people were about how a nuclear war with the Soviets could be "won") or The Interview.

According to the filmmakers, in a interview I watched, it is meant to be played to an assured degree. It is not meant to be serious, and never was. I don't plan to see it, but that is just what they said.

Edited by Bullman on Mar 11th 2020 at 6:41:31 AM

Maybe we will get a “The victims come across as huge assholes” moral then.

Oh wait, reviews are in. Apparently the script is lazy as a satire and takes jabs at both sides while not doing anything provocative.

So, in summation, it appears to be schlock.

Edited by theLibrarian on Mar 11th 2020 at 7:33:48 AM

I'd find it slightly more creative if the "evil liberul" stand-ins eschewed traditional heavy artillery in favor for bows and arrows and the like since they (presumably) hate gun culture (as all sane people should, but I digress).

x3 Honestly it sounds like they're playing cop out to cover their asses. "It's not serious. Gosh, you must be offended if you're taking it seriously!"

Even if the film is SOMEHOW far more comedic and absurd than the trailers make it out to me... ALL of this marketing is making the film look like a serious horror thriller. Even AFTER the film was delayed for that exact controversy.

If they're trying to make it look like an absurd satire, they're fucking awful at it, frankly.

The trailers are not very good for the reason that it doesn't seem like there is a main character, but just a very broad ensemble.

The problem with satire is that it's hard to tell if it's allegorical or absurdity, which means you can make arguments in either direction what the intention was. Trying to decipher the meaning takes a very confident hand, Jordan Peele and Get Out! started a little renaissance with bringing horror back to its' social/political roots but sloppy commentary is still sloppy. I heard Black Christmas got a similar reaction.

What about Black Christmas?

I am about to do a binge of those.

The 2019 one is a very blatant Author Tract about Sexism on campus, but the message falls short big time. Not gonna spoil, but watching the movie on its own is more then enough to see why the message falls short.

I know a lot of criticism towards it was "SJW power fantasy", at least by people that hate that sort of thing.

I haven't seen it but reading the trope page the fraternity is Brainwashed and Crazy from a black goo from a cult-like statue, as such when it engages in revenge fantasy it completely ignores the implication that most, if not all, of their targets could be unwilling pawns.

That and even the non-evil guys are stupid or unhelpful there.

Sounds like it would also be pushing the onus off on something else too? "The frat douches aren't bad! They only did bad things because a space whale forced them!'. Sounds like a Morton's fork; Treat the frat douches as the bad guys and we're ignoring that they're technically victims too. Treat them as victims and the onus is pushed off of them and the message is ruined.

Just watched it. As a Hunting the Most Dangerous Game story, it's fine—the action and suspense elements are more or less adequate. As a satire it felt... confused. I'm convinced that the movie was trying to say something, but it's not really clear to me what that is. Maybe they were just gunning for controversy, in which case I suppose they succeeded.

Yeah, that's what most people who'd seen it were saying, that it tried to take both shots and seemed like it was trying too hard.

The bad press was probably the only way they would have gotten any decent publicity.

Edited by Kaiseror on Mar 15th 2020 at 11:32:22 AM

The twist is it's a bunch of liberal Hollywood elites vs. Qanon conspiracy theorists. I have to say that it didn't feel particularly good nor sharp in its satire.

That's not so much the "twist" as the "premise." (Not sure about "Hollywood," though - they seem more like Silicon Valley types. Honestly, I'd even say Manhattan, especially with Athena having a second home in Vermont and Mike being from Connecticut, but I don't think you could be that rich in Manhattan without bumping elbows with Republicans.)

I liked it better than I was expecting. The description on the trope page, while technically accurate (again, except maybe for the "Hollywood" part), sounds like a completely different, much more serious, and much less watchable movie. The one that actually exists, while it doesn't have a whole lot to say, doesn't really feel like it thinks it does; it mostly feels like it was written by a liberal starting to get creeped out by their friends' rhetoric. That'd be how you end up with a Hunting the Most Dangerous Game film where the "hunters" feel more fleshed out on average than the "deplorables" (especially when you consider Crystal might not count).

(I do kind of wish we'd gotten some insight in the flashback into what Yoga Pants was chosen for, out of place as she seemed. Seems a missed opportunity to come full circle.)

A question for those who've seen it, since my rental's expired and I'm not spending twenty bucks again - the eleven photos on Athena's wall, who was missing? I'd assumed Randy and didn't check, but now I'm wondering if it might've been Don, or Crystal...

Edited by TwinBird on Mar 27th 2020 at 3:31:53 PM