The Hunt(2020)

R
1h 30m

Release Date: Mar 13, 2020 | Wide

57%
66%
C+
6.6

Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they've been chosen - for a very specific purpose - The Hunt.

Releases

Original Release | Mar 13, 2020

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Box Office Results

Results

Opening Weekend US & Canada:
$5,304,455
Total US & Canada:
$5,812,500
Total International
$4,737,850
Total Worldwide:
$10,550,350

Current Showtimes

Your Location or

(U.S. Only)

Director & Top Cast

Craig Zobel
Director

Tobias Lindholm

Technical Specifications

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1

Other Details

Country of Origin: China,Japan,United States

Language: English,Arabic,Croatian

Summaries

Plot Summary

A group of "elites" discusses the upcoming hunt of "deplorables". The elites include Ted The Doctor (Steve Coulter), Athena Stone (Hilary Swank), Richard (Glenn Howerton), Captain O'Hara (Jim Klock), Liberty (Teri Wyble), Martin (Dean West), Sgt Dale (Steve Mokate) (a consultant to the elites), Miranda / Ma, Julius / Pa, Peter (Vince Pisani), Crisis Mike (Usman Ally).On Athena's private jet, a flight attendant talks to Richard but is interrupted by one of the strangers who was supposed to be on the hunt, Randy (Jason Kirkpatrick). Randy staggers out from the cargo hold. Ted claims to be a doctor and subdues Randy before Athena kills him. It is made clear that the strangers were transported to the manor by elites on Athena's private plane, and Randy woke up before he was supposed to.12 strangers mysteriously wake up in a clearing in the middle of an area referred to only as Manor House. The strangers are Gary (Ethan Suplee), Don (Wayne Duvall), Yoga Pants (Emma Roberts), Moses / Staten Island (Ike Barinholtz), Trucker / Shane (Justin Hartley), Crystal Creasey (Betty Gilpin), Caroline / Dead Sexy (Sylvia Grace Crim), Boxer / Target (Christopher Berry), Molly / Big Red (Kate Nowlin), Bandana Man (Walker Babington).They do not know where they are or how they got there. They all woke up with a gag in their mouths, which is locked from behind. Yoga Pants finds the keys in a small envelope kept over a wooden platform and uses that to open the gag locks. They discover that they have seemingly been chosen to be hunted in a game devised by a group of wealthy elites. The group of people chosen, however, are not picked at random, but are chosen based on their conservative leanings. They get weapons from a stash in a clearing. Yoga Pants is the first to be taken out by a long-range rifle. Dead Sexy is impaled on a booby trap as she runs from the gunfire. Trucker Shane goes when he steps on a landmine. The fire seems to be coming from the command bunker a fair distance away from the clearing, but with a clear line of sight.Some of the strangers come across a fence that circles the clearing the surrounding woods. Target, Big Red, Vanilla Nice & Staten Island find a street across a fence and think they are near civilization. Target dies by being hunted by arrows (and subsequently killed with a grenade), while the others get on the other side of the fence. The group comes across a gas station manned by 2 elites Ma and Pa who are pretending to be gas station attendants at a normal street. Ma and Pa tell the strangers that they are on route 31, near the town of Elaine in Arkansas. Staten Island makes a 911 call using their phone and says that a group of people has been abducted and is in the Manorgate scenario. The 911 call receiver turns out to be an elite. They are shot down by Ma (Amy Madigan) & Pa (Reed Birney), who tell the strangers that climate change is real. Ma and Pa then proceed to clean up the gas station, just in case any other strangers come by.The hunters' sport is derailed when one of the hunted, Crystal Creasey (Betty Gilpin), fights back and starts killing them one by one. She walks into the gas station and murders Ma and Pa, when she realizes that they are lying to her face (they got the cost of cigarettes wrong in the state of Arkansas, as they cost only $6 in that state). Inspecting the pickup truck outside and removing fake license plates, Crystal learns she is in Croatia. She also takes the Walkie Talkie from Ma and Pa to keep track of their communications. She notices that the strangers are being tracker by drones and manages to hide from them.She also discovers a booby-trap wired to the driver's-side door and warns Gary, a conspiracy theorist pod-caster. They board a train full of refugees, whom Gary believes to be crisis actors; the train is then raided by Croatian soldiers. When Gary tries to convince them of Manorgate and the refugees' perfidy, refugee "Crisis Mike" admits that he is indeed one of the hunters but the other refugees are innocent. The raid by the soldiers was unplanned, and he offers a head start for Gary's cooperation. Gary wrests a grenade from Mike and uses it to kill him. Crystal is taken to a refugee camp where she meets Don. Oliver / Fauxnvoy (Macon Blair), an envoy from the Croatian U.S. Embassy, arrives to extract them but during the drive Crystal becomes suspicious of his comments, kicks Oliver out of the car and runs him over.She and Don find Gary's body in the trunk with a box marked "bribe money" and a map of the Manor. Crystal tells Don the story of "the Jackrabbit and the Box Turtle", in which the Jackrabbit kills the Box Turtle after losing a race with him. At Oliver's intended destination, Crystal kills Richard, Ted, Martin, Peter, Liberty, and injures their tactical consultant Sgt. Dale. Athena calls out to Don via radio, asking if he killed Crystal. Don refuses to disarm aiming his gun at Crystal, who kills him. She tortures Sgt. Dale to get Athena's location - revealing during their exchange that she previously served in Afghanistan - then kills him. In reality, Athena's group text exchange was a joke. However, it was leaked on the internet, creating furor over "Manorgate". Subsequently, the group's participants, whose careers were ruined, decide to make Manorgate a reality and abduct those responsible for spreading the conspiracy theory.Athena had insisted that Crystal be included after seeing a social media post from Crystal that offended her. When they confront each other, Crystal claims that Athena has confused her with another woman from the same city in Mississippi, with a differently spelled middle name, Mae. The two fight and impale one another on the blades of a food processor; Athena dies, but Crystal sees a jackrabbit near the body and regains some strength. She cauterizes her wound, takes Athena's clothes and bag, and leaves on her jet, talking to the same flight attendant from the start of the film.

Storyline

"Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are -- or how they got there. In the shadow of a dark internet conspiracy theory, ruthless elitists gather at a remote location to hunt humans for sport. But their master plan is about to be derailed when one of the hunted, Crystal, turns the tables on her pursuers. — krmanirethnam A group of strangers, for those of them who end up counting they numbering twelve, wake up with locked gags around their mouths in a wooded area surrounding a field, their exact locale unknown, and they not knowing what's going on. They find both the master key to unlock the gags, and a crate in the middle of the field containing a live dressed up pig and a cache of weapons. Believing they will need the weapons perhaps for their survival, they end up arming themselves which is when they begin to be attacked from afar, some to their deaths. A large number of them begin to believe that they are involved in Manorgate, a story that went viral on the Internet: a group of elitists in Vermont who hunt man for sport, and the weapons provided to them are just to give them a sense of a fighting chance. Some of the group are able to escape what they believe is the game area, but they still have to determine what/who is friend or foe among those and the situations they encounter "outside". But it is one, who may be the outlyer among the twelve, that may have the best chance of survival in assessing the situation as it happens as opposed to fitting the situation into the Manorgate story. As such, she may actually come to discover what is going on and that the twelve were specifically chosen for this exercise. — Huggo