★½
“Stupid hunts.”
Oh, dear. I appreciate that actors have to work, like everyone else. Van Dien, in particular, has a reputation in our house as someone whose name is not typically a badge of quality. But it’s sad to see Suvari is now apparently in the same career boat. I can only presume the offers aren’t exactly flooding in, if this is the work she has to take on. It’s another variant on the old Most Dangerous Game story-line. Here, it sees redneck entrepreneur Carter (Van Dien) luring in women with the promise of $100,000, while remaining vague on the details. Turns out the victims then are pursued through the forest and have to survive for 24 hours. Spoiler: they don’t.
Their latest prey is Cassandra (Suvari), who joins up after having a fight with her girlfriend, Tessa (Stojan), in the cafe where Carter and his teenage son Jackson (Peltz) are eating. This is going to be Jackson’s first hunt, though he’s… not exactly as enthusiastic about it as his father. I should not need to describe any plot elements further. If you’ve seen as many as one (1) of this kind of thing before, you’ll be able to predict almost every story beat to perfection. There is a twist, in regard to Cassandra and the motivation for her actions, which does at least explain some of the idiocy present. Otherwise, this is painfully predictable, and executed in a manner which is equally tedious, almost as if intended to suck away any tension.
It doesn’t help that none of the characters here rise about the most basic and banal of cliches, with the hunters the worst. Obviously, this kind of plot has an inevitable gender political subtext. That’s fine, except when, as here, the makers decide that’s insufficient, eschewing all subtlety to rub the audience’s face in it. Hence we get an extended sequence of Carter and the other hunters sitting around, spouting fringe subReddit BS, which could only be written by a true believer in toxic masculinity. For instance, someone actually wrote this: “We are men. We are primal, strong, sexual beings. We used to be the stronger sex.” I can state, with 100% certainty, I’ve never heard anyone speaking like that. Ever.
The women fare little better: the apparently “feminist” intent severely undermined by a relentless focus on having the women humiliated while scantily-clad. Five minutes of role-reversal at the end, accompanied – and I wish I were joking here – by a lesson in Greek mythology, does not cut it. The action is equally implausible, both in concept and execution, such as knives being thrown incredible distances into people’s foreheads, and any impact is nullified by the fact you have been given no reason to care about anyone involved. For much of the movie, Cassandra’s entire persona is “woman threatened by men”. That’s it. Don’t know about you, I need a little more depth of character – and that turns out to be largely false. Even by the low standards of Van Dien’s filmography, give this one a wide berth.
Dir: Elizabeth Blake-Thomas
Star: Mena Suvari, Casper Van Dien, Will Peltz, Maya Stojan