“Hunt
Club”
Movie
Review
Hunt Club, starring Mena Suvari, Casper Van Dien, Will
Peltz, Maya Stojan, and Mickey Rourke, was written by David Lipper and John
Saunders and directed by Elizabeth Black-Thomas. The story of the film revolves
around a gang of male hunters who periodically entice women to their island
with the promise of winning $100,000 in a hunt, only to find that they are the
ones being pursued. They mess with the wrong girls this time, and they must
face the consequences.
After starring in Justin Lee's adaption of The Most
Dangerous Game in August, Casper Van Dien is back in Hunt Club, a different
take on the topic of hunting people. He plays Carter in this scene, taking his
son Jackson (Will Peltz), who is going on "a very significant
weekend" for him. They encounter Mena Suvari's character Cassandra at a
restaurant where Tessa, played by Maya Stojan, recently walked out after an
argument with her. She is invited to go hunting with them for the weekend,
where there is a chance to win $100,000. They set out for the island together
with Teddy, Preston, and Lexi. They run into Conrad and Williams there.
The opening act of Hunt Club has very little that seems
genuine or authentic. The interactions between Carter, Jackson, and Cassandra
aren't at all believable, and neither is the conversation. From the minute the
women enter and Cassandra begins to look at Jackson until she decides to leave
with these two new males, everything sounds and seems artificial.
From there, it doesn't get much better. On a sugar daddy
website, Lexi is depicted as a bimbo who hooked up with Teddy and Preston. When
was the last time you heard the word masculinity without the word toxic
connected to it? Carter asks the hunters as Virgil leads the first of the
hunted into the woods. She also claims that males are physically being
castrated for possessing a Y chromosome. It is difficult to take anything about
Hunt Club seriously because there is no attempt to develop real characters;
instead, there are over-the-top cartoonish stereotypes. We are expected to take
everything seriously by the director and her writers. But the effect is exactly
the opposite when one of the hunters impales his victim while pulling a face
straight out of a Wrong Turn sequel.
Hunt Club attempts a few twists around the time Cassie and
Yvette, a stereotypically irate black lady, are carried outside to be hunted,
but you'll have seen them coming from a long way off. If you were thinking that
the movie would at least quicken its pace now, you were mistaken. The action
moments in the movie are primarily saved for the final half-hour, but there
aren't many of them, and they aren't very well done. Several events—including
the payoff that should have concluded the movie—take place off-screen, and the
viewer only gets to see the consequences.
Hunt Club ought to have been a truly awful movie. The
villains' speeches, though, seem like they were lifted from an incel troll bot
on Twitter since the producers spend way too much time letting them speak. They
may have been perceived as menacing rather than comical with a few sentences
here and there to make their opinions apparent. But, in its current form, that
and a lack of suspense, action, or logic make this one club you don't want to
join.
WATCH THE REVIEW VIDEO FOR MORE...
0 Comments