Crisis Babies: The Hunt (2020) Review

 

  It was pulled from its initial theatrical release date of September 27th after the Dayton and El Paso shootings and wrapped in tinfoil until it was unwrapped for March 2020. But March 2020 is when COVID started. In fact, the week it came out is when The Shutdown happened so it made virtually no money at the box office and, a week later, was put on Video OnDemand like so many other movies last year. Before anyone got to see it, and I mean regular-ass people, not Critics and Pundits, Conservatives called it 'Woke Liberal Bullshit' and 'Evil' while Libs called it 'Dangerous' and 'Conservative Propaganda.'

  Trailers leaned into it being a Blumhouse Horror Movie, name-dropping The Purge and Get Out as its tonal brethren. But once everyone moved on to another 'problematic' movie or show or meme or song, The Hunt sat in RedBoxes and VOD to cool off. I initially dismissed it but, through some inexplicable morbid curiosity and insomnia, I decided to see what all the talk was about.

...and it's one of my new favorite dark comedies.

    It's not Liberal Wokeness, it's not Conservative Agitprop, and it's not ApoliticalModerate sneering either. It's not trying to tear society apart nor trying to save it: it's trying to make us laugh. And, fuck, did it accomplish that for me. I laughed hard, and often, throughout and recovered some of the respect I'd lost for Damon Lindelof after Watchmen, which I thought was gonna take more than this dopey cartoon. Color me surprised and fucking satisfied. Skewering both sides, which hasn't been 'allowed' since Trump famously, lazily, and disingenuously took ahold of "both sides" after Charlottesville, it stands as nothing anyone said it was.

  I hate the trend of media having characters as pedantic, didactic, pontificating mouthpieces that stand in the way of genuinely Good Writing - The Message taking precedent over The Story. There are filmmakers who manage to do both, like Sam Levinson and Jordan Peele, among others, but for the most part we're inundated with this bullshit. The Hunt has didactic characters but they're all broad caricatures - them being didactic is the point because that's the joke. Everybody in this movie is bullshit and it's brilliant.