The Hunt  ★★½

SOME films don’t deserve notoriety. The Hunt is one of those.

Originally slated for release late in 2019, it was pulled amidst the usual short-term response to yet another mass shooting in the United States.

The film’s distributors have since traded on this fairly fleeting notoriety by promoting it as the most shocking film you have never seen.

The Hunt is far from that. Yes, it’s violent and gory in parts, but still within the high range of an MA rating these days.

The basic premise – an organised death hunt of poor people by rich people – has been done at least a dozen times before.

Usually one of the prey turns out to be much tougher and smarter than the hunters assumed and manages to turn the tables on them. In this case Crystal, played reasonably well by Betty Gilpin, has military training that the well-organised group behind the hunt just happened to miss while doing their painstaking research.

The film is exciting in parts and efficiently directed by Craig Zobel and I particularly liked the way you had to constantly shift your attention and sympathies as key characters were despatched.

But the main problem overall is the script.

It’s hard to tell who exactly the talented writing team of Nick Cuse (Watchmen) and Damon Lindelof (Lost, World War Z, Watchmen, The Leftovers) are targeting. One moment it seems to be the right-wing gun lobby but a couple of scenes later it’s bleeding heart Liberals.

Perhaps that’s their point…we’re all to blame. Unfortunately, the message gets lost in the violent and muddled translation from page to screen.