'A better-than-decent B-movie': Recalling the wild ride of The Hunt and Its Red vs Blue narrative

"'Most Talked About Movie of the Year': 'The Hunt' and its Gory Caricature of America's Divisions"

"The most talked about movie of the year...is one nobody's seen yet," proclaimed the trailer for 'The Hunt', a Blumhouse production, which, after weathering a storm of controversy and a Presidential slight, was finally released in March 2020. 'The Hunt', which devoured the world of Red vs Blue, still bears the teeth marks of America's fierce class warfare, as reported by Rolling Stone.

A Swiftian Satire or Horror Show?

Indeed, 'The Hunt' birthed a flurry of think pieces as it was deemed "a harbinger of Western civilization's end," or dismissed as a better-than-decent B-movie, depending on who you asked. But, whatever the label, this movie reflected America's reality in a gruesome light. Ripped from the Twitter feeds of the nation, it served up an audacious mix of shock treatment and tongue-in-cheek transgressiveness.

Producer Jason Blum, famous for hits like 'Paranormal Activity' and 'Get Out', had another box office slam dunk with 'The Hunt'. The film leveraged its societal caricatures to attract a wide audience, but it was the intense portrayal of Red vs Blue - or as the film has it, the elite vs everyday folk - that truly stoked the embers of controversy.

"Real Americans" vs "Coastal Elites"

The plot centered on coastal elites who pay a premium to hunt "real Americans," mirroring America's Red vs Blue battle lines. "Yes, a lot of people who are instantly coded as 'real Americans' hailing from the rural South to Staten Island wake up in a field, with black mouth-bits attached to their faces, sprinting toward a wooden box filled with weapons," the review on Rolling Stone vividly described.

It was these brash depictions, the sharp satire of America's sociopolitical tensions that fueled the controversy, and the film's appeal. 'The Hunt' didn't just provoke, it also introduced two strong characters - Athena (Hilary Swank), a corporate shark embodying elitist entitlement, and Crystal (Betty Gilpin), a military veteran from Mississippi. "Thanks to Gilpin, she’s both an action heroine and the closest thing to a three-dimensional person we’ve got here," as Rolling Stone succinctly put it.

A Lens into America's Divisions

'The Hunt', despite its tumultuous reception, became a lens into the zeitgeist of its time. For all its controversies, the film - with its over-the-top attempts to parrot America's discourse - serves as a gritty snapshot of a divided nation. It may not have been the Swiftian satire its creators wanted it to be, but it certainly left its mark on the cinematic landscape and the American psyche.

Several parts of the text in this article, including the title, were generated with the help of an AI tool.