Besides lots of violence, it touches on America’s fractured political climate and the ever-controversial Second Amendment
A movie pulled from cinemas before it was even released and delayed for more than half a year in the US has finally arrived on Netflix in the UK and it’s getting plenty of attention
The Hunt was originally scheduled to release in September 2019 but after reported hesitation from Universal Pictures was followed by two separate mass shootings in Ohio and Texas within the space of 24 hours, the studio cancelled its theatrical release.
The Blumhouse film, directed by Craig Zobel, was designed to be a satire on contemporary US political culture, the general premise being that a group of globalist elites pay huge sums to hunt people for sport – the victims being right-leaning Americans.
As you can see from the trailer (which had to be edited and re-released following the incidents), the dark, gritty, Hunger Games-esque scenario then gets predictably turned on its head when the hunted become the hunters and a deeper conspiracy is unravelled.
Aside from the very obvious material surrounding gun control – an aspect that director Zobel said the audience “weren’t connecting it to… at all” – there were fears it would also be controversial given its political commentary.
In the film, those being hunted are considered not human beings and are instead called, “deplorables”: an inflammatory quote that was directly pulled from Hillary Clinton while talking about Donald Trump voters during the 2016 election.
The Hunt was eventually released to American audiences on March 13, 2020 and after a long wait, is now being watched by Brits on Netflix and the general reception is pretty much summed up in this tweet:
https://twitter.com/TinaBob17/status/1490471801788456961?s=20&t=Imrh-X2K_43tOGpmhWZeZw
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