Night of the Hunted review.
Night of the Hunted does so many things well that it is painful to watch it be undone by the one thing it gets brutally wrong. It simply doesn’t know what it wants to say…because its most talkative character peddles in unrelatable absurdities.
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Night of the Hunted
Directed by Franck Khalfoun
Screenplay by David R.L. and Rubén Ávila Calvo
Starring Camille Rowe, Monaia Abelrahim, J. John Bieler, Alexsander Popovic, Jeremy Scippio, Abbe Anderson and Stasa Stanic
Night of the Hunted Review
Shudder’s spooky season bonanza continues with a one location thriller that succeeds in providing thrills…and falls apart in its attempt to utilize political beliefs. Alice (Camille Rowe) finds herself the target of a masked sniper during a middle of the night stop at a gas station. With no phone, no help, and no hope…she must find a way to survive what she can’t see.
Night of the Hunted is a good movie dragged down by one bad choice. As such, we will break it down in two separate discussions. First, the thriller movie that is presented. Second, the mess of a political commentary it attempts. It’s worth noting before we begin that nothing in the second discussion is the fault of the actors. Rowe does fine work as the trapped lead character. She spends a lot of time alone…reacting to the threat of something happening. It’s a hard job that she pulls off well. Stasa Stanic plays the largely unseen (but not unheard) antagonist. It’s not his fault that his script is a disaster. He does everything he can with it.
So, that out of the way…Night of the Hunted works as a thriller. A sniper sits on a billboard that read “GODISNOWHERE”, picking off people as he sees fit. Alice and the man she is having an affair with (John) make an ill-fated stop at the gas station the shooter is targeting. When Alice enters the gas station’s mini mart she is shot in the arm. Night of the Hunted wastes no time getting right down to business. It also knows how to solve the pesky modern technology problem with a narrative choice that makes sense. The shooter blasts Alice’s phone…leaving her with no way to communicate with the outside world. Aside, that is, from a walkie-talkie inside the store.
The man on the other end of the walkie-talkie is very obviously the shooter. The story wouldn’t work if it was anyone else. The shooter briefly pretends to be someone else…but Night of the Hunted doesn’t drag out something we already know. By the time he’s finished talking, however…you’ll wish it would have. But that’s a topic for later. To show he means business…the sniper takes out John when he heads into the building in search of Alice. At this point…Night of the Hunted was rolling. It established the situation, raised the stakes, and even solved the cell phone problem…all in a tidy opening act.
And it isn’t done there. The reason that Night of the Hunted works as a one location thriller is through the sheer power of its concept. Bullets come without warning…piercing unsuspecting victims stopping in for gas (or explanations). The realistic violence and gore effects elevate the persistent threat. The story plays with the setup just enough to have some fun along the way. When a man enters the building looking for the clerk…Alice notes that the shooting stops. Can she trust this man? Is it the sniper messing with her? Does he have a phone? Night of the Hunted keeps you guessing long enough to layer in a new level of tension…and, of course, a violent payoff.
Alice is a clever heroine…finding ways to maneuver around the building without being seen. She heals her wound, finds resources to try and turn the table on her fortunes…and manages to persevere through an inescapable nightmare. The story adds in a new mission for Alice in the third act…it largely changes the game for her…but it feels natural enough to sustain the shift.
There is a lot to like here…a lot that works. That’s why it’s so unfortunate to have to discuss the problem with Night of the Hunted. For every good move it makes as a thriller…it undoes it with its political commentary. Through the walkie-talkie we hear the sniper talk throughout much of the movie. Sometimes it’s to taunt Alice. Most of the time it’s to give voice to why he’s doing this. Namely…unhinged right wingnut talking points. This is problematic for a few reasons.
First, there are people out there who will listen to this manifesto and nod along in agreement. With the mass murderer. To be clear…they’ll be nodding along with the mass murderer. Secondly, right wingnut buzzwords are empty nonsense. Cancel culture…woke…all that garbage that either redefines consequences for one’s own actions or just shifts definitions to mean “whatever horrible thing I like that I think should be allowed”. This jumbled mess of an ideology adds up to a temper tantrum about things they don’t like. What they don’t add up to…is a reason to shoot innocent people at a gas station. As a motive…it’s nonsense. As a megaphone for conspiracy theories and dangerous rhetoric…it’s a disaster.
Now…one could argue that the filmmakers know this. They make it the perspective of the bad guy, after all. But that’s always been a lazy dismissal for these types of things. The truth is the very people that engage in these toxic discussions are the ones who are incapable of understanding that they’re toxic. They’ll watch this and nod along with every empty syllable uttered for the sake of hate. They’ll side with the villain’s perspective because they share it…and never recognize that it makes them the villain.
Michael Myers was always his scariest when we didn’t know why he was killing. Night of the Hunted not only tells you why its killer is doing it…it gives him the dumbest possible motive. A motive that doesn’t explain it like the movie seems to believe it does. An anti-vax, anti-women’s rights, anti-anyone who doesn’t think like me nutjob is not a compelling antagonist…because the script never manages to form it into a cognizant belief system. Because it isn’t one.
More than once while watching Night of the Hunted I wondered how much more effective it would be if the sniper never spoke. A silent assassin shooting people for an unknown reason…Alice caught in the crossfire. That’s a scary scenario. Instead, Night of the Hunted chooses to give him a voice. A voice that regurgitates buzzwords that only mean something to people who will agree with them. An eye-roll for everyone else.
Scare Value
This is the tale of two movies. The taut, suspenseful one location thriller…complete with excellent gore effects and brutally realistic violence. And the mess that is its attempt at being a political commentary. Put simply…having an antagonist list off right wing buzz words doesn’t provide them with a point of view. That’s the entire point. The words are inherently without meaning. Putting them in the mouth of the bad guy neither empowers nor defuses them. Instead, they create an eye-rolling distraction from what is an otherwise intense, well-crafted movie.
2/5
Night of the Hunted Link
Streaming on Shudder
