Hunter Hunter [2020]
"The wolf is back..."
Hunter Hunter is the third film by writer director, Shawn Linden and... let me tell you, he is one to watch. HH is a slow burn with a magnificent payoff. Utilizing a cast of less than 10 named characters, Hunter Hunter manages to be gripping, intriguing, isolating, and confined even if at times you have to suspend your disbelief.
Hunter Hunter tells the story of a family living in the middle of nowhere, doing their best to survive. When checking their traps during one particularly sparse season, they notice signs that a wolf has returned, thus threatening their meager earnings even further... But wild, hungry creatures are not all the woods hide in these parts...
The film is a technical achievement to say the least. What Shawn, cinematographer Greg Nicod, and composer Kevon Cronin have managed to do with the way the story is told through the camera and score is absolutely wonderful. This is not a film you'll walk away from and say "wow wasn't that score amazing?" It's not one that I'll rave on about how the score was "a character just as much as the actors themselves". But that, that simplicity, is its perfection. You won't remember what it sounded like, but you will remember how it made you feel. None of the music felt out of place, too loud, too quiet, or anything in between; it told the story exactly how and when it needed to.
The cinematography is top notch and strongly redolent of Gladiator with it's bravery in playing with the shutter speed across the entire film. In emotionally intense scenes, the action suddenly gets sharper, more crisp and jerky. It's an unsettling technique that draws us into the action and isn't often used in more commercial films; making it even more poignant here. Even in basic shots, the color pallet of the film is consistent and engaging — angles help to tell how our characters are feeling or how we should feel about them, and shots are framed in precise and intentional ways.
HH is not without its flaws but I don't want to hang on them too much. This was a small production from a fairly new crew, and for that, it's nearly perfect. But, to be critical for a moment, it does have some quirks. Some of the characters make decisions that don't entirely make sense, a few lines of dialogue are a little wonky, and a conflict setup very early on in the film not only doesn't go anywhere, but is meaningless to the plot in its entirety. Those things aside... I want to talk about the storytelling itself.
Hunter Hunter is not going to be a film for everyone. As exemplified by it's ratings, it's something of a polarizing film. The subject matter isn't something everyone will find interesting, and many won't make it through the slow burn of the plot to get to the ending that makes it all worth your while. Then again, there will be some that get that far and just don't care. Even in those cases though, the storytelling itself of HH is fantastic and should be absolutely commended. This film manages to tell four or five different stories all at the same time with an incredibly small cast, connect them, bring them together, then resolve them all without undo exposition or hand holding. One scene in particular features an absolutely brilliant piece of writing that shifts the perspective of the entire film, but only if you're really paying attention.
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I posted this on Reddit as well.
1. Is that what he told you?
Before Lou begins to assault Anne, he says "... but your husband wanted to catch a wolf. Is that what he told you?"
For me, that says that Joe was full of it when talking about the wolf... that he knew something else was afoot. Which, yes, he'd found the bodies already, so of course he did. But I don't think that's what Lou is referencing...
I take this film to show that Joe and Lou are involved in something together, because there's too many things that don't add up if they aren't:
a) Joe is a life long, generationally taught, hunter.
His sole purpose for being out in the woods after shooting the wolf was to stake out the murder spot and catch whoever did it. How does someone who has survived their entire life hunting and trapping get snuck up on by a guy like Lou?.. Unless Joe knew him, there’s just no way that someone of Joe’s ability would get caught out by a general killer.b) We establish early on that Joe is "afraid of people".
While he isn't literally “afraid” of people, he does have a pretty clear disdain for them. If he was staking out the place where the bodies were found or searching the woods for a murderer, and he came across Lou… he absolutely would NOT just approach him to talk. He doesn't like people in the best of circumstances and certainly not with what happened here. Even if Lou was injured, Joe wouldn't have just approached him, and certainly wouldn't have been overpowered by him in that state… Unless he trusted him.c) Why are the traps reset?
If a single trap was set, maybe Lou got out on his own, fought Joe, and hobbled towards his house somehow. But with both traps set, that makes no sense. Those traps are set by a tool (I'm pretty sure) and Lou would not have been able to get himself out without at least damaging the wound more, and that was a pretty clean cut. We have additional evidence of how difficult it would be to escape because, when the ranger gets caught, he can't even almost free himself. So, alone, how would Lou?d) Why would Joe save him?
In what situation does Joe find Lou either uninjured and approach him just for funsies, or injured by the traps he laid specifically to catch the killer and then decide "I'm going to put this random guy who’s definitely not the killer on my sled and drag him home to save him"... No matter what way you slice that, it doesn't make sense if they don’t know each other.e) The marks on the trees.
When Joe tracks the slain wolf back to the road, he finds an X mark on a tree. He then runs through the forest following these markings. Marking a game trail is a fairly normal hunting practice [so far as I understand it] but following something you didn't make isn't typically done by sprinting through the woods. It feels a little too familiar to me.f) The state of the corpses at the site.
Each corpse is in a significantly different state of decay. We have an entire skeleton all the way through the fairly fresh corpse of the woman missing the arm. Lou has clearly been at this for a long time. How has Joe never come across this before?Obviously, this is all speculation, but it’s speculation that I think is fun. If none of these things are true [or you just don’t care], Hunter Hunter is uh… not very good. But I’ve reviewed it with these “truths” in mind and, viewed that way, I like this movie quite a lot.
At 1:33 runtime, Hunter Hunter is the perfect example of a short movie that feels longer than it is, but not because it's boring; because it's dense and it trusts that you'll follow along. Dawn your camo, load your guns, and fill up your canteens, because Hunter Hunter on Hulu, is one adventure you might not all make it back from...
"Who is he?"
