“Hunter Hunter” (2020) / Z-View

Hunter Hunter (2020)

Director: Shawn Linden

Screenplay by: Shawn Linden

Starring: Camille Sullivan, Summer H. Howell, Devon Sawa and Nick Stahl

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The Overview:  Beware of spoilers…

Joseph Mersault (Sawa) lives in a remote wilderness log cabin with his wife Anne (Sullivan) and daughter Renée (Howell).  Joseph is a modern day mountain man, living off the land, hunting and trading animal skins for goods.  They’re just barely getting by.  Anne doesn’t enjoy the life, but tolerates it.  Renée loves hunting with her dad and living in the wilderness.

When a huge, rogue wolf returns to the area, Joseph decides he will hunt and kill it.  When Joseph doesn’t return after a couple of days, Anne fears the worst.  But the worst is yet to come…

I liked a lot of Hunter Hunter.  For me it went off the rails when characters started doing really dumb things.  I could accept Joseph going to hunt the wolf.  But when he finds something totally unexpected and doesn’t go back to get his family away to safety and he doesn’t go to the police… well, that’s just dumb.  When Joseph doesn’t return after a couple of days, and Anne and her daughter have had a run-in with a wolf and Anne still decides to wait it out in the cabin… that just dumb.  When… well, you get the idea.

I had the feeling at the start of the film that we may be dealing with a werewolf.  The lingering shots of the full moon also added to that feeling.  Was the director just setting us up?  The thing that really brought down my rating of this film was the final act.  It seemed out of character for Anne, and the gore was over-the-top.  Then for the police to allow her to simply walk away?  C’mon, man.

Hunter Hunter earns 2 of 5 stars.