After the big win that was Loop Track, I was ready for another good random horror movie, and let me tell you that I struck gold. A little bit of searching around on Google and Reddit for recommendations of similar films yielded the most perfect result I could have asked for: Hunter Hunter.
Just by the name alone I was intrigued. Hunter Hunter, eh? So it’s going to be a movie about a hunter becoming the hunted, in some way or another. But then the very vague description given, “a thriller that goes full-on horror in the last 10 minutes” sounded like precisely what I was in the mood for. So I plugged in my Apple TV for the first time in months and watched a movie on Shudder for the first time since I initially subscribed to it three years ago. I’m good at money :p
Now, I’ll be honest here, I’ve been struggling with trying to figure out exactly what I want to write about this film. I have been thinking about it almost non-stop since I watched it, and I just can’t get a good mental picture of what I want to put in this review. That’s why I don’t do this professionally. So I’m just writing. I guess we’ll just do the synopsis thing and see where it goes.
Hunter Hunter is (at least at the beginning) about a fur trapper named Joe, his wife Anne, and their teenage daughter Renee. They live in the wilderness outside of Winnipeg, Manitoba (I, uh… I like this setting) and lead a very simple life. Joe is the kind of man who is set in his ways and is training Renee to follow in his footsteps, but Anne is starting to notice that their way of life is becoming unsustainable and wants to move into a town so that she can get a job and Renee can go to school.
Thoughout the first hour of the movie or so, there’s much talk of “the wolf”; a predator so deadly that Joe actively worries about his family’s well-being with it around. I’m not animal expert, but right off the bat, I’m going to say that a family of trained hunters should probably be the people who are least afraid of a solitary wolf. Unless it happens to be some kind of supernatural wolf… So Joe does what he must, and goes out on his own to hunt the wolf and bring peace to the woods. Or something like that.
There are then two wolf encounters: Joe sees it first while hunting, and we hear home take a shot at it off-screen, and we don’t ever see the result of that shot, but when questioned about it by Anne later, Joe says he got spooked and shot accidentally, then goes back out on the hunt. Anne and Renee then see a wolf while they’re out by the river, and Anne manages to scare it off by shouting a lot. It appeared to be an abnormally large wolf, but I just Googled it, and it turns out that wolves can grow up to six feet long? That’s crazy! Now I understand why they’d be afraid of it! Bravo, Anne, for not only staring it down bravely, but also succeeding in getting it to turn tail! I’d have shat my pants and died on the spot.
What I didn’t mention before is that when Joe saw the wolf, it was munching on a detached human hand. Also, shortly after this encounter, Joe stumbles upon what appears to be some sort of campsite that is littered with at least half a dozen women’s corpses in different states of decay. At this point, I was still kind of fixed on the “supernatural wolf” idea and started to wonder why a wolf would have such a killing ground. But then you notice that several of the corpses are stripped, one is bound to a pole, and none of them have any visible wounds. I don’t think that a wolf did this. It’s after this discovery that Joe lies to Anne and returns to the hunt. So, there’s clearly something more to this story.
A couple of nights after Joe leaves, Anne begins to worry, as he stops responding to his walkie (even though he outright tells her he’s going radio silent). Renee then hears something in the woods and Anne investigates, finding a wounded man lying out in the middle of nowhere. She drags him home to tend to his wounds and let him recover. It’s worth noting that this man, Lou, is very obviously a bad guy. The score alone gives it away, but his mannerisms and the inconsistencies in his story absolutely highlight him as a villain. I wasn’t sure if this was on purpose, or if the director was trying to fool the audience. He wasn’t. While a lot of exactly what unfolds in Hunter Hunter is up to the viewer to piece together, it never tries to lead you in the wrong direction.
And so, with Joe has disappeared off into the woods without contact, Anne and Renee are stuck at home tending to Lou while thinking that there’s a big, bad wolf outside. The problem for them is that they can’t hear the score, and don’t quite realize that the wolf is already inside the house (metaphorically, of course). I’m sure that you now have at least a couple scenarios of how this plays out running through your head, and I’m going to leave you with those. The third act of Hunter Hunter is one of the most shocking, horrifying, and sickening endings I’ve ever seen in a film, and I’ve seen a lot of deranged stuff. I had to look away at some points, because I simply couldn’t handle what was happening on-screen. It’s just way too real and hits way too close to home (literally). It was nothing at all like what I was expecting, but holy cow was it satisfying in the most horrible ways.
To say that I very much enjoyed Hunter Hunter would be an understatement. I wrote in my Loop Track review that I’m at the point where I give a movie a pass if it maintains my interest throughout, and not only did Hunter Hunter keep me interested, but I was straight-up gripped. I had to pee for the entire second half of the movie but held it until the very end because I couldn’t pull myself away from what was happening on-screen. It might have helped me understand the plot a little better to take a quick break and ruminate on what I’d seen, but honestly half the fun of a movie like this is hopping online afterwards to read all the theories and interpretations (I think I also wrote that in the Loop Track review).
So yeah, Hunter Hunter is a hell of a movie. I really appreciated that it takes a lot of typical fairy tale tropes, grinds them up, and then uses them in different ways to make something very unique. I always like when a movie pivots halfway through and goes in a totally unexpected direction, and this one does it twice by making you think that Joe is the protagonist (he’s not) and that the wolf is the antagonist (it’s not). There’s honestly so much to say and praise about Hunter Hunter, but I’ve absolutely already said too much, and I 100% urge you to go watch the movie before you read or watch anything else about it. Just be aware that if you’re the sensitive type, you may not sleep for a while afterward. It is a remarkable and highly memorable film, and I’m going to have it on my mind for a good, long time to come.
9/10, because it doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand and definitely can be confusing the first time around. Otherwise, I have nothing negative to say about this film.