Hunted: Review

6th February 2021

Ève (Lucie Debay) is having a bad night, she’s out at a bar when a man approaches her and when she says no, he just keeps going. That’s when she meets The Guy (Arieh Worthalter) who will change her life, they have drinks together and dance and he even offers to take her home. However, as soon as they’re in his car, The Accomplice (Ciarian O’Brien) gets into the driving seat and off they go. Luckily, Ève escapes, but after a while The Guy catches up with her and soon the hunt is on.

Hunted is an arthouse inflected horror movie from writer/director Vincent Paronnaud, co-written by Léa Pernollet and Stephen Shields and is available to watch on Shudder. There are many horror movies where women are the victims and Hunted doesn’t shy away from this either, in fact going back to probably what was the first tale of terror – Little Red Riding Hood.

However, prior knowledge of this would be needed because without knowing this, besides Ève’s red hooded coat, the movie bares very little resemblance to the story.

Although Little Red Riding Hood may indeed be a tale of the dangers of trusting strangers, there are very little similarities left between the fairy tale and the movie, unless you count the character The Guy meets along the way who’s credited as The Huntress (Simone Milsdochter).

There’s a certain aspect of the movie which could be left open to interpretation, but for the casual viewer who wants to watch an uncomplicated horror movie then they may be left confused.

Of course, there are certain subversions to the original story where the confused little girl is saved by the big, burly woodsman, however this has come to be expected. In fact, although Worthalter’s performance is good, albeit a little over the top, the other factors such as his accomplice and seemingly no motivation other than to do evil seem quite one dimensional.

Fairy tales have been misread and interpreted over many movies and will probably consider to be done. There may even be a gritty Humpty Dumpty movie on the horizon, hopefully when that happens though there may be more depth.

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