The Hunt
Since movie theaters across the country are shut down, Universal Pictures will allow customers to rent The Hunt much earlier than usual, even though it is still playing in some theaters. Starting Friday, March 20, you can rent this movie for $14–$20, for a period of 48 hours. You can find it on Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, iTunes, and more.
More than anything else, The Hunt plays out like a long, gore-happy episode of The Twilight Zone. The premise—initially, at least—is simple: In a riff on the 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” rich, urban “elites” round up a dozen rural “deplorables,” set them loose on the grounds of a woodsy, sprawling estate, and hunt them down for sport. But a clever twist or two later, The Hunt, written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof—the latter coming off his success with HBO’s extraordinary Watchmen—ends up offering a bit more than dark humor and skull-crunching violence. Not a lot more, mind you—just as The Hunt was blasted, sight unseen, by conservatives last fall, it’s also in danger of being overhyped. But The Hunt does have something smart to say, and it’s all the more impressive that it gets its point across despite—or, actually, because of—all the limbs and bullets that’re flying all over the place.
by Erik Henriksen