Hunting Season: Final Girls Berlin Review. It’s late at night at a gas station. The attendant, Callie (Hannah Levien), is battling her past vice as well as the graveyard shift. The lights keep flickering, and some customers heckle her for working in such a place. She’s a woman who seems to have a bad history with alcohol, no one says anything explicit, but one can easily infer that she found herself on the wrong side of the law because of it.

The customers and her radio both mention a creature prowling the town, initially thought to be a bear but now believed to be more sinister. These are the events of Shannon Kohli’s short film “Hunting Season” which is ultimately about the fateful meeting between Callie and the unknown beast.

On the surface, there isn’t much to unpack about Hunting Season. It’s a very well made short with very little to decipher outside of the ending. An ending which could simply mean nothing at all, certainly nothing seems to stand out. Upon further inspection what I genuinely believe the beast itself isn’t representative of anything other than the unknown and maybe the magical or mystical, both of which are grand themes, but neither clearly link to Callie. However, the moment of their meeting does mean something.

Most of the brief 12-minute runtime is given to depicting Callie as a struggling outcast shunned for her apparent damaged relationship with alcohol. When she meets the creature, it’s wounded, much like she is. They are the same, but neither of them is a monster, their only issue is that they are both damaged. This meeting was fate assuring Callie that there’s nothing wrong with her; it was an intervention to change her life and let her know she’s not alone. 

Hunting Season is the first short I’ve seen in a long time that I wish was longer. There’s a lot that could come from where the film ends off and the style and acting is all so well done that seeing performances develop in this world would be interesting.

Kohli weaves plenty of emotion into this short as well, especially suspense which builds smoothly and slowly to the fateful encounter. This short has all the potential to be expanded upon if those involved so choose and I would be more than happy to watch it. 

To sum up, Hunting Season is an eye-catching trip through the abstract and metaphor, and Kohli manages to pull it off without being pretentious and instead makes something you only want more of.

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