Hunted (2020 | Belgium | 87 minutes | Vincent Paronnaud)
Hunted, a brand-new thriller debuting on Shudder today, takes what could’ve been a DOA cliché setup and charges it up with kinetic energy, style to burn, and a welcome dose of smarts. And if its reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, that ambition never hampers how well it delivers the nail-biting goods.
Eve (Lucie Debay), a French housing development supervisor, winds up in a dive bar in her off-time one night, when a charming stranger (Arieh Worthalter) helps her deflect the unwanted advances of a drunk patron. She and the stranger hit it off, but soon after a brief make-out session Eve discovers that her new would-be paramour poses a much more dangerous threat than the one she’s dodged. From there, Eve, the stranger (he’s never named), and said stranger’s submissive accomplice (well-played by Ciaran O’Brien) engage in a cat-and-mouse scenario that stretches from a gas station to the wilderness and beyond.
On the face of it, director Vincent Paronnaud has crafted a textbook example of survival horror. The sub-genre’s long been an exploitation staple, but its basic structure (one party pursuing another through the woods, as both parties wrestle with the hostile wilderness around them) was given Oscar-level cachet in 2015 with Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s The Revenant. Paronnaud’s movie, however, orbits light-years away from The Revenant’s veneer of lavish period respectability.
Hunted makes no bones about serving up the gross-out moments and relentless suspense necessary to an extremely effective grindhouse thriller. Fortunately, Paronnaud, (co-director of the magnificent, Oscar-nominated Persepolis) isn’t afraid to sneak in some topicality and visual ingenuity between the shocks, from an animated dark fairy tale opening (in which a character narrates the story of an accused witch allying herself with wolves), to dollops of nature-based symbolism placed throughout, to pointed jabs at toxic masculinity. It doesn’t all work: Some of the visual semaphore (Eve wears—wink, wink—a red hooded jacket), and the climax’s cranked-to-11 cartoon ultraviolence, land a bit too on-the-nose. But it’s hard not to admire Paronnaud’s readiness to subvert formula, and things never get dull for a minute.
The movie also serves up the suspense in spades, particularly in its opening third. There’s slow, unnerving buildup to Eve’s abduction, and to the catalyzing incident that thrusts her and her pursuers into the wilderness. Debay plays Eve with vulnerable relatability, finding her strength and resourcefulness organically—her hard-earned intensity makes that batshit finale as cathartic as it is ridiculous.
Hunted’s antagonists are also considerably more interesting than the cardboard villains that normally populate high-concept horror movies. Worthalter is straight-up brilliant as a magnetic, charming monster who manipulates and dominates O’Brien’s simpering toady on myriad levels. Vile as he is, you can’t take your eyes off of him. And the dysfunctional dynamic between these two loathsome characters hammers home another key theme that’s gained queasy resonance since last week’s siege on the US Capitol: a smooth-talking sociopath with enough charisma can sway the impressionable, the ignorant, and the weak—often to horrific, devastating effect.
Hunted is now streaming on Shudder.