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Trigger warning: This article includes references to sexual assault, rape, and violence. The trigger word “rape” is used throughout this review so please stop here if that is triggering for you. Thank you.
Relying on the fear tactics of sexual assault is a cheap horror trope, and that is exactly what Hunted does to attempt to scare audiences. The 2021 Belgian-French-Irish movie directed by Vincent Paronnaud is barely a horror movie at all, making it hard to believe that Shudder, a primarily horror streaming platform, would produce it. It fits well with movies like Taken (2008) or The Last House On The Left (1972), except it lacks a redeeming ending for the protagonist and is just a disturbing watch.
At first, we are introduced to a likable French girl in a bright red coat. Her getup is clearly foreshadowing the horrors she might endure through the film, similar to the hunting of Little Red Riding Hood by the big bad wolf. Only in Hunted, the big bad wolf is a deranged, nameless serial-murderer-rapist who maniacally carries around a video camera with archived films of his past victims. The storyline is disturbing, and at the beginning, viewers might find something redeemable and alluring about the hook — but don’t be fooled by the mystique.
The movie takes a climactic turn when the French girl meets the big bad wolf character in a night club, and then another climactic turn when he kidnaps her, and then another when she gets free and runs into the woods, and another when he chases after her — you get the point. Eventually, the movie becomes an ongoing hunt of Eve (whose name is so forgettable, I had to look it up again since they mention it once at the start and never again).
Hunted ends up being a “could’ve-been-a-nail-biter” viewing experience because of how predictable and boring the hunt of Eve is, and the let-down doesn’t stop there. The movie’s sole terrifying aspect is the reality of sexual assault — a trope that is cheap and not tactful. Ultimately, Hunted is memorable only because of how disturbing the antagonist is. There are a few jarring and hard-to-watch murder scenes, but in the end, the short 87-minute run time of this movie proves to be too long. What clearly started out as a twisted take on a fairytale becomes a poorly done and shallow reliance on the fears of rape, and it fails to provide a satisfying and redeeming ending for the protagonist.
A Cheap Trope
Horror and thriller fans have been hit over the head by the kidnapping trope a million times. As a horror fan, I am personally begging the genre to stop relying on rape and kidnap as primary fear tactics — but here we are again, with another rape-murder storyline in Hunted.
It’s not that this isn’t a scary basis. The horrors of sexual assault and rape are astounding, largely since it is an issue that faces and affects most people on a personal level. In 2018 alone, the National Sexual Assault Resource Center reported nearly eight hundred thousand victims of some form of sexual assault. Rape and sexual assault are real horrors, making them distasteful as horror tropes, and even more distasteful when the trope is poorly executed (which happens to be exactly what happens in the story of Hunted).
Movies like Split (2016) tastefully tie in the possibility of sexual assault as part of the fear of the captured characters, but Hunted misses this opportunity entirely. The movie randomly backtracks to remind the viewers that the lead antagonist is a disgusting and vile man who takes pleasure in raping innocent women when really they could have stopped the reminders after the first reference to his archive of horrors. While it could be argued that this is part of the horror of the film, I would say the exact opposite. Tastefully lacing in this antagonist’s intentions could have improved the viewing experience of this movie by leagues, but alas, that is not the case.
It becomes less terrifying to watch this movie and more of just a disgusting viewing experience by the middle of the film. Audience members immediately learn to hate this antagonist in an almost unwatchable way. Much like my first experience watching War Of The Worlds (2005) in cinemas, I wanted to walk out of this movie at multiple points. Hoping for redemption at the end, I held onto my seat and endured the entire movie. To my utter dismay, this movie missed what could’ve been a satisfying ending in an attempt to allude to a greater evil in what was probably meant to be an artful conclusion.
The (Almost) Redeeming Ending Of Hunted
The best part of any terrible rape-trope movie is the ending when the almost-victim brutally murders the antagonist. (Yes, it is obvious how these movies will end — but we still watch them to see the evil-doer have it stuck to them.) I was holding out for this satisfying completion through this movie, but much like the rest of the movie, it was a letdown.
At the beginning of Hunted, a monologue introduces two nearly-irrelevant characters who don’t come back into the storyline until almost the end. The two characters are a survivalist mom and son duo who routinely spend time in the woods preparing for the end of the world. They serve as a vehicle to further emphasize the horrors of the antagonist, who winds up finding the two camping and murdering the mom for no other reason than his own paranoia and obvious hatred for women. The movie could have redeemed itself with the lead victim and the archery-pro survivalist son teaming up to kill the antagonist; however, this is not what happens.
Instead, the archery son shoots at the antagonist and strikes him once. Unfortunately, it barely slows the antagonist, and the survivalist son is left in the past, as we do not see him again for the remaining run time. This leaves an unsatisfying end to the son’s story, who had to watch the deranged antagonist brutally murder his mother with an arrow through the head. The antagonist and Eve wind up finding a nearly empty housing development, and the ultimate climax of the movie is when Eve pins and strangles the antagonist until he dies in front of her.
While this might sound satisfying, ultimately, the movie’s final scene, which shows the lead girl running through the forest in a deranged manner before fading to black and rolling credits, suggests that the girl was driven mad by the experience. Rather than maintaining her sanity and finding redemption in his murder, it is suggested that the antagonist’s crazy tendencies were simply passed along to Eve. This is certainly not impossible, but it takes power away from this type of movie and hands it all to the crazy murder-rapist. Suggesting that the crazy persists, like the ending of any Halloween movie where Michael Myers rises from the dead once again, is not ominous, but rather disappointing and leaves viewers high-and-dry.
Should You Skip The Disappointment?
I wish I could talk about redeeming qualities of this movie, but they are few and far between. The movie’s beginning lures horror fans in with a tactfully formed capture sequence but ultimately drops the ball on what could have been a short, sweet, and nasty twist on Little Red Riding Hood. This movie was nothing short of a repetitive letdown and probably would have been better off staying in the idea tank.