Everyone Got The Movie ‘The Hunt’ Wrong
Image; Amazon
The movie The Hunt (2020) was controversial before it even aired. The social commentary about liberals hunting conservatives garnered criticism from far-right pundits like former president Donald Trump. It was pulled from its initial release in 2019 following the mass shootings in Gilroy, Calif., El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, and then aired during the pandemic when we all had more to worry about than a movie being insensitive.
As political satire, The Hunt is a story that, from start to finish, cautions against “political extremism.” This straightforward, admittedly reductive political commentary is nothing we haven’t seen before (see Braindead), but underneath the bluster is a rather insightful message about how politics is a game for the wealthy. While the creative team behind this film most likely didn’t intend to focus on class, we end up getting a message about one working-class woman struggling against a group of wealthy elites.
Based loosely on The Most Dangerous Game (1924), the plot is quite simply about a cadre of rich liberals capturing a group of conservatives that they drop into an unknown location to hunt for sport. Many of the victims quickly suspect they are part of a well-known conspiracy in conservative circles called “Manorgate,” which is an Internet rumor about this very scenario that allegedly happens every year, and in a certain respect, they are (more on this later). However, this realization doesn’t help them as they are killed by the likes of spiked pits, arrows, and cyanide-powdered donuts.
The narrative doesn’t have too much sympathy for either side of the alleged political spectrum. The deaths of liberals and conservatives alike are gleefully framed in ways that are as visually interesting as they are shocking. For example, near the beginning of the film, we are shown a perky blonde woman (Emma Roberts) who fits the archetype of many conservative figures like Tomi Lahren. At one point, as she is navigating a death arena, she narrowly dodges sniper fire. “That almost hit me,” she gasps before her head immediately explodes from gunfire. By killing off the type of person who, in another film, would be the protagonist, this scene tells you that this movie will take no prisoners. That it’s not interested in favoring the darlings on either the “left or the right.”
This irreverence suggests that the movie is favoring the political “center.” We see this textually supported in the film’s protagonist Crystal Creasey (Betty Gilpin), who goes the entire film not really offering up her political ideology, even when it might directly impact her life. When asked if she’s interested in understanding why people are trying to kill her, Crystal responds: “They're trying to kill me. I don’t give a shit why.” She is framed, for all intents and purposes, as apolitical.
Yet, she isn’t just another passive figure in the liberal death arena. Crystal looks damn cool fighting through it. The way she MacGyvers, her way through the death traps of these rich elites, often seeming like she is the only smart person in the room. We are very clearly supposed to trust her logic and opinions, and given that she’s the sole “contestant” who ends up surviving The Hunt, it's quite clear that she’s our moral center as well.
We see this preference for the political center indicated by the director of the film Craig Zobel, who wrote to Variety: “Our ambition was to poke at both sides of the aisle equally. We seek to entertain and unify, not enrage and divide. It is up to the viewers to decide what their takeaway will be.” This response is obviously a nonanswer. We can understand why it’s a position that might be offensive to those who consider the asymmetrical polarization that has overtaken the Republican party to be worse than the “wokescolding” that permeates some leftist and liberal circles. In the words of Peter Debruge, also from Variety:
“The danger of “The Hunt” isn’t that the project will inspire copycat behavior (the premise is too far-fetched for that), but rather that it drives a recklessly combustible wedge into the tinderbox of extreme partisanship, creating a false equivalency between, say, Whole Foods-shopping white-collar liberals and racist, conspiracy-minded right-wingers.”
This perspective is valid; however, we will soon see that The Hunt accidentally provides a far more nuanced depiction than “moderates” good, “extremism” bad. There is an unintended message broadcasted here that has everything to do with why Crystal is “apolitical” and what her politics actually are in the film.
The thing about politics is that no one is really apolitical — everyone has opinions. While we don’t get many stated political opinions from Crystal, we are repeatedly shown her positions. Crystal is insanely practical and down-to-Earth. She hilariously figures out that two rich liberals are faking their characters based on the price of cigarettes in Arkansaw. She seems to have spent her life just trying to survive, and she doesn’t have the time to engage in the bs both her peers on the left and the right do in the film. She has to get the job done and values “hard work” and “common sense.” In other words, she is coded as a member of the working class, specifically the white working class.
Compare Crystal’s positive traits (e.g., resourcefulness and common sense) to the negative ones of the liberal elite. The film certainly takes a few superficial jabs at cancel culture and political correctness (jokes that often don’t quite land, in my opinion), but the thing that mostly demonizes them is their immense impracticality: these people barely know how to use the weapons they are firing; they hired a movie star actor to train them how to fight; one of them even leaves a bunker during the middle of a fight to pee. This hunt is not a matter of life or death to them but a game.
The showdown between Crystal and the liberal leader Athena Stone (Hilary Swank) doesn’t focus on a grand debate over ideology. Athena takes the time to instead monologue about how to make the best grilled cheese (hint — it allegedly involves Gruyere). She then reads Crystal’s bio, judging her for having a broken home, using welfare, and not being able to get a job.
“Crystal May Creasey. Born in Missippi, Whites Crossing. Fitting. Dropped out of school at 12, right around the time your daddy was killed by the police when they raided the methamphetamine lab. Your mother joined him soon after that — overdose. Probably the last batch of Daddy’s stuff. Romantic…After your mom died you bounced from part time job to part time job, to welfare and back. More times than I can count honestly. The only consistency was your inability to stay employed.”
These insults say far more about Athena’s class resentment towards the poor than anything about her being on the left. A rich Republican could have equally said this monologue, the words unchanged.
In fact, the thing that prompted these rich liberals to go on a homicidal rampage in the first place was that initial “manorgate” rumor. It was a joke they said once on a text message thread — not something that, at the time, was real. The message was then leaked to the public, causing a scandal that led them to lose their jobs and positions in high society.
It was the loss of some of their status that led to this sick plan, not actually a political motivation. They enacted “manorgate” for real as a form of revenge. The politics were simply a rationalization these rich people used to feel better about themselves. Most of the liberals in the film even risked death by posing as elaborate characters to attempt to extract an apology from the people they were trying to kill. It had nothing to do about politics and everything about their egos.
This reading even changes the context for how we see the political correctness jokes throughout the film. These liberals are not coded as terrible for hating racism or talking about appropriation. It's because they are utterly detached from reality, perceiving politics as a game of sport (quite literally in this case) rather than an institution of power that affects people's lives. They see things like anti-racism as the language of respectability. In one chilling scene, they try to rationalize including a Black Conservative in the hunt so that it’s not “problematic.” They are so detached from the material conditions surrounding these political fights that they don’t understand what the words they are saying even mean.
In the end, we learn that Crystal isn’t even one of the intended “deplorables.” She was picked up by mistake. “You got the wrong Crystal,” she informs Athena shortly before their fight. And so the movie doesn't end up being a fight between the left and right at all, but one woman struggling to survive against the whims of the rich.
When Crystal finally succeeds in her fight against Athena, she patches up her injuries and heads to the plane these rich people arrived in during the start of the film. The workers there are in shock. “Oh shit,” the flight attendant gasps. They are briefly worried that Crystal will enact revenge on them for all the events that unfolded in the film.
This fear is unfounded, however, as Crystal holds no animosity towards them. “The, uh assholes you work for tried to kill me, so I killed them instead,” she says nonchalantly. The movie then ends cutely with the flight attendant, who has never had the caviar she serves on the plane before because she’s “not supposed to,” being given some to eat by Crystal. They barely know each other, but they are bonded by class, and that’s something Crystal seems to recognize instinctually.
There is clearly a class element that gets lost in the debate in this movie — one that I don’t think was intentional. Based on how writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse talk about this film, they most likely didn’t intend to make class a focus at all. They wanted the audience to sympathize with Crystal, and making her working class was the quickest way to do that, but by centering a working-class woman against a cadre of wealthy elites, that narrative is textually there.
Regardless of someone’s political affiliation, politics is often treated as a game by those in power. The rich wage fights that are utterly detached from the reality of everyday people, and it leads to a distorted worldview. It's great to see that absurdity reflected in a film, even if only by accident.