The Hunt got a lot of mixed reviews before it was out because of its outrageous subject material. In short, the movie involves stereotypical liberals hunting/murdering stereotypical "deplorables" through an elaborate (though bungled) set up. The rage about the movie was due to this superficial read: Hollywood slaughters Middle America for entertainment. This reading is, as stated, shallow and does not get into the real good and bad in this movie. The Hunt operates at two levels: a critique of the psychodrama of contemporary politics, but also a perverse valorization of hidden forces that drive the plot on wards (many times unintentionally).
The movie is a thriller. After a doctor, feminist, and urbane liberal murder a redneck who "woke up" on the plane, the plot begins in the middle of things. Various Trump voter types (e.g. "Yoga pants" white girl, white nationalist, redneck, trucker, wanksta) wake up gagged in the woods. Soon they find some weapons and come under fire. The movie screws around with you through some throwaway subjectivities (i.e. you follow one character for a few minutes before they're shot or blown up, transferring to the next character). Over the course of the next hour, nearly all the "deplorables" get wiped out through gruesome kills. One character, however, stands out: Snowball. Unlike the others, she is neither panicked nor incompetent. She anchors as the movie's main subject, following her as she tries to find out how to escape. She becomes the heroine.
But before we return to "snowball" (or what her name means), let's return to the main cast of characters. On the one side, there are the hunted "deplorables". The movie mocks their aggressive bravado, but indirectly complements their decency. The hunters give their prey access to weapons, with an implicit assumption that the liberal killers are using the same "stand your ground", second amendment, logic. Yet they're not competent killers. Most of them get wiped out in the first barrage. Another group gets tricked by trusting an elderly couple (Ma and Pop) running a fake Gas station. Being told they're in Arkansas (an ambiguously"friendly" territory: a red-state that produced the Clintons), the elderly couple shoot and poison the hunted. Armed to the teeth, they simply could not countenance they had wandered into the spider's web. Throughout the movie, many of the "deplorables" die because they have a naive trust in American authorities, whether it's elderly small-business owners in flyover country or (later) the American embassy. The irony is that while the red-staters take to their guns quickly, they are not apt to survive an actual tactical onslaught.
The liberals, in contrast, become hardened killers overnight. The background, revealed over the course of the movie, is that this group of friends had joked about killing "deplorables" in the wake of the 2016 election. The joke riffed off the fact that there had been a rumor about "Manorgate", where elite liberals hunted regular Americans for sport. The friends participated in this joke and, these texts being leaked, ruin the careers of all these liberals. The NGOs, corporations, and foundations that hired these people removed them because of bad optics. The leader of this gang, Athena (played by Hilary Swank), decides to punish these people. If they're so afraid of liberal elites murdering them, then why not make it a reality? Athena rents a space in rural Croatia to execute her plan, unleashing the slaughter at the beginning of the movie. She hires a "professional" (who turns out to only have been in the National Guard) to train her and her friends in combat, tactics, and firearms. The liberals engage in stereotypical conversation and speech tropes. One man gets called out for "gendering it" when he says "guys". Ma and Pa engage in self-criticism when, as they clean up corpses, Pa refers to "black people", with the justification that NPR said it was ok. And Athena, when getting fired, condemns the "academically challenged" and "toothless rednecks" as evil. In a not so subtle nod, Athena's name reveals her fundamental character: she's the brains of the operation and she prides herself for her intellect and smarts. The liberals are the smart ones getting dragged down because of "deplorable" rednecks and the selfish.
The kicker, of course, is that ressentiment drives the blue-staters as much as the red-staters. They lose their jobs because of insensitive comments. They train themselves in a rural compound to kill the people ruining the country. They are all white, with the exception of one guy who exiles himself to play a "crisis actor" embedded among Middle Eastern refugees. The liberals think they're the good guys, getting even with the degenerates electing a degenerate. All in all, the set-up is a nod to the climate of the 90s: militias, election of Clinton, government accusations of rightwing terrorism. The moral is that American politics is an obscene psychodrama, driven by ressentiment on both sides. "Deplorables" think liberal elites are murderous (and are shocked when they find themselves in the middle of their conspiracy theory). Liberals decide to become so to own the "conservatives" (there's nothing particularly conservative about rightwing American politics). Both think they know more than the other. Both think they're saviors of the country and representing what's good in America. The tropes even blur as one "deplorable" fantasizes about reporting this crime and getting on Hannity like "those two jew boys [Woodward and Bernstein] who did Nixon in". Both sides are equivocally deluded, idealistic, and full of raging resentment. While the "deplorables" don't come out looking too moral or smart, the liberals are even more vindictive and depraved. They're the ones that use their resources to actually hunt people for sport, self-consciously becoming the monsters they're accused of being. American politics makes people into murderous sickos.
Here enters "Snowball". She is a John Wick style waifu: quiet, stable, hyper-competent in combat, and a little crazy. She appears like the others (originating from Mississippi with a southern drawl), but never acts like them. She meets up with a pseudo-Alex Jones podcaster (Gary) and, later, a redneck (Don). Both men are loud and big, but are constantly confused and outmatched. Snowball saves Gary from opening a truck rigged with explosions. Don celebrates the US embassy rescuing him and Snowball from Croatian military-police. He is blind to the fact that he (bribing the foreign police) is part of the plot. While Snowball ruthlessly kills the envoy (kicking him out of the car and running his head over), Don is bewildered and freaks out. Snowball proceeds to kill the rest of the liberals and their military advisor. She even gets goaded to kill Don when Athena acts as if he's in on it. Yet she only shoots when Don, wild-eyed and scared, raises his gun against her. Ultimately, Athena and Snowball engage in a final "boss battle", with Snowball surviving and Athena dying.
The movie has a good ironic sense for metacommentary. The various characters operate according to tropes. Snowball laconically remarks that she was remiss to interrupt Athena's villain monologue. See, Snowball explains, she's not the woman Athena thinks she is. She's not the Crystal Creasey (her real name) who accused Athena of being in on Manorgate and as an evil liberal elite. Rather, she's a crazy combat veteran from Afghanistan who is not interested in the psychodrama. Athena names her "Snowball" because she's a pig (per Orwell's Animal Farm). Yet Snowball corrects her: she doesn't fit the character of political idealist Snowball. Athena is dumbfounded that a hick knows Animal Farm, to which Snowball gives the punchline: Athena is snowball (and her revolutionary idealism put her in the grave). This dialogue climaxes a point made repeatedly throughout the movie: the liberals aren't as smart as they think. The embassy rep has a map of the compound in his trunk (which Snowball uses to kill them all). Athena picked up the wrong woman, screwing up her research. She doesn't even understand the meaning of her own snooty symbolism. Athena also expresses bizarre levels of materialism, diving to save a priceless bottle of champagne and begging (when Crystal is about to throw her through a glass-door) "no more glass". Part of the comedy is that Crystal grants her request, opening the door before throwing her. Respect for property and the fine things lingers even as Athena is literally in a battle for her life.
The tropes of "deplorable" and liberal operate to obfuscate the characters from themselves and their situation. Snowball, as the accidental outlier, simply destroys the liberals and outlives the red-staters. At one point, Snowball tells Don a bizarre version of the Tortoise and the Hare. Per the fable, the jackrabbit loses after arrogantly dozing off. The moral of hard work and perseverance pays off. But there's a twist: later that night jackrabbit shows up at Turtle's house with a knife and murders all of them. To a stunned Don, Snowball explains the real moral: power is power and the Jackrabbit always wins. The point plays out in her conflict with Athena, when she kills her because Athena simply is not a survivor but an idealist. She follows the script, in both living and dying, and does not simply act to live. Crystal Creasey may superficially appear as a hick (accent and all), but she simply doesn't care. Conservative myths and liberal myths are still myths, just-so stories that comfort one faction against another. The reality is that those who can will, and Crystal's self-possession guides her gracefully through survival. The last scene, after reaping the fruits of her victory (eating Athena's grilled cheese, wearing her dress and heels, and taking her dog and privately chartered jet back to the states), she simply drinks the priceless champagne from the bottle. Winners win.
All in all, the movie is an excellent attack on the idealism that fuels the ressentiment on both sides. It really twists the knife in the liberal side, that they're even sicker than the "deplorables" because they have the resources to brutalize the mud people they hate. They're not any different than racists lynching a black man and having a picnic (as if it's a kind of sport). But the movie also unintentionally promotes a hyper-ideological ethos through its unreality. Crystal Creasey, or Snowball, is not a real character. A completely competent and sober waifu killing machine is no more real than John Wick or Rambo. But the movie doesn't seem aware of the unreality of its own protagonist. As the National Guardsmen is dying, Crystal gives some of her background: she is a combat vet from Afghanistan who's been in "the shit" (unlike the Guardsman). Of course, there are no female infantry (let alone special forces), so this backstory does little to explain her competence in tactical infiltration, weapons expertise, and hand-to-hand combat (let alone her survivalist instincts). It would have made more sense (just barely) to tell a story about her dad teaching her these things in the Mississippi swampland. Of course, her ruthless drive to survive comes from her mom, the one who told her the modified Tortoise and Hare fable. She is a male fantasy of feminine power, talented in war and straightforwardly feminine. Though the movie does not draw the parallel, if Athena is really Snowball than Snowball is really Athena (ending the movie in her garb and with her goods). Yet the movie does nothing with Crystal's unreality, and as such it only feeds into the hyper-ideology of the movie's background.
Besides a subtle valorization of the military (who've been in "the shit"), the plot turns on the liberals losing their jobs. In a flashback, Athena is fired for her and her friends' dark sense of humor. The reason is that these jokes (seeming to confirm red-state hysteria about Manorgate) are bad optics. They look bad to the company (or NGO or foundation, depending on the other characters' stereotypical jobs) and investors. While the movie shows the liberals as a fountain of psychopathic cruelty and resentment, it does not develop the larger corporate element. Not a few elites weather criticism for atrocious things they say and do. The thing is that Athena (and her friends) are wealthy liberal elites, but they're not really running the show. They are simply political agents, dependent on the democratic mechanisms of voting like red-state hillbillies (an equivalency which drives their psychic discomfort and rage). At the end of the day, they're cogs in the machine (though, ones with better resources and more plugged in) just as much as "deplorable" voters are. The movie deplores the insane psychodrama of blue-state and red-state, but it does nothing but presume the edifice of financial control and military dominance. Power is power, after all, and the string-pullers remain without criticism. This assessment is true to a degree, but deserves critique. Whether its the invisible forces of corporate-media pressure or the unreal war goddess, the movie does little to reveal the engine of American psychodrama. The resentiment did not originate itself, as Athena jumped fully formed out of Zeus' head, another myth the movie subtly leaves untouched. In the end, violence and money are the way of the world. The plot guides the viewer to celebrate Crystal's victory as she enjoys the spoils of war.
That's the dark lining to the movie. It is true that the psychodrama of blue-state vs. red-state weaponizes people into insanity. The movie embraces an average, working-class, heroine (Crystal at one point reveals she works at a car rental). But the dark forces that lurk in the ground remain without criticism. The viewer might believe that power is power, and simply become cynical about moral categories of right and wrong. Crystal has little obvious moral compass (besides expressing some concern for a refugee baby when Gary is about to open up on the "crisis actors"). She simply survives. Such is a basic trope for the horror-thriller movie. Right and wrong dissipate as you grip your chair and desperately want the protagonist to make it through the ordeal. The movie leaves this impulse untouched. The real problem of the red vs. blue psychodrama is that morality is weaponized for manufactured political consent. While The Hunt rightly mocks the insanity of American politics, it only treats a symptom and not the source.
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