‘Hunt Club’ Review: A #MeToo Film on Steroids

A couple of years ago, the #MeToo movement exploded on social media. The movement had as its objective to create consciousness about the terrible cases of sexual abuse that occur not only in Hollywood but also in every single workplace. We have seen them all in fiction, and they constantly happen in real life. Women are being forced to do things they don’t want to do in order to achieve their goals. There are many victims, and in the process, many women came forward to tell their stories. The Hunt Club feels like a residual from the worst of the movement.

The Hunt Club is a film directed by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas and written by David Lipper and John Saunders. The film stars Mena Suvari, Casper Van Dien, Will Peltz, Maya Stojan, Jessica Belkin, and Mickey Rourke. The film tells the story of Cassandra, a woman with a dark past who gets involved with a pair of strangers on the road. These two men take Cassandra to what will be a hunting weekend among rich people. Cassandra doesn’t know that she will become the prey and need to fight for her life.

Hunt Club is very in your face with everything it tries to say. The movie’s title brings memories of “The Most Dangerous Game,” the famous short story written by Richard Connell. That short story has been adapted to the screen multiple times in several ways, and Hunt Club feels like another one of those derivatives. In this case, however, the social class and moralistic component is thrown out of the window and substituted by the most extreme gender politics. Women Vs. Men, where the men are complete monsters and not much else.

The movie’s name also harkens to the many social clubs of the rich and famous, which are very much part of Hollywood. The film takes these concepts and ideas and remakes The Most Dangerous Game for the gender-focused audiences of today. There isn’t anything wrong with this; watching an old story from a new angle is always interesting. However, the movie is so focused on making its statement that what comes out of it cannot by any means be taken seriously. It is hard to say if this level of presentation helps the relevance of the message at all.

We see a bunch of rich and poor men talking over their conference calls, planning how to hurt women because that is what men do every waking moment. It all lacks nuance and a higher level of commentary. Women are good, and men are bad seems to be an everyday discourse at the moment, so nothing here is particularly fascinating or original. Understandably, creating consciousness about such a heavy subject is important, but when trying to create a parody out of it, you need to be smart about it. Hunt Club is not very smart.

Every single character is a caricature. No characters here can talk like human beings or feel human emotions. Only hate spits out of their mouths, and social media quips left and right. If someone told me that the movie was written by ChatGPT using things from Twitter, I wouldn’t be surprised. Social media isn’t the real world, but most media outlets are adamant that it is. This decision is the logical one when it comes to creating something that will sell, of course, but it feels like a disservice to the #MeToo movement as a whole.

In general, the movie follows a very simple setup, one we have seen many times before. There are also a couple of revelations here and there. Still, the movie never really sets up these mysteries well enough, so when the revelation occurs, there is no feeling of satisfaction or excitement. They become just one more plot point that does not weight it. A couple of characters are also given a lot of relevance, but they are more like plot devices than characters at all. Stojan’s character is the worst offender here.

The movie does have an impressive cast of actors. Suvari has always been a solid actress, and even in a project like this, you can tell that she is not phoning it in. The actress does a very good job at being the anchor for the audience, and she has always had that Final Girl quality. She makes good use of it in this movie. It is a shame that Suvari needs to be involved in projects such as this, work is work, of course, but she deserves so much better.

On the other hand, the male cast has appearances from Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke. Van Dien has been doing this type of film forever, so it isn’t surprising to find him here. Rourke is another fallen actor who now appears in projects like this because of his inconsistency. Both of them do what they always do, but Rourke especially is making no effort whatsoever. Instead of making the movie more watchable, both actors just imprinted that cheapness quality on the entire project. Something that Suvari definitely did not deserve.

Everything is very standard in terms of visuals and direction, leaning more towards the cheap side of production values. Hunt Club is not a high-budget effort. There are very few locations, the cinematography is rough and sometimes borderline amateurish, and the acting from the least renowned cast members is funnier than anything else. Again. It is hard to say if this movie is going for the parody angle or if it really believes everything it says. Either way, it doesn’t really work with the theme at all.

In the end, Hunt Club tries to take advantage of a trend, but it comes too late in the game. At this point, the movie feels more like a parody of something, and it is really hard to identify what it is making fun of. Is it the entire #MeToo movement? Or the entire male society? Who knows. As the movie closes by trying to connect its events with classic Greek mythology, it becomes clear that whatever vision this movie had for itself was a complete mess, and the execution didn’t really help it.

SCORE: 4/10