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Whether it is Ti West’s X or the film adaptation of Joe Hill’s The Black Phone, the last year has brought some impressive genre films that are not easily forgettable. I do appreciate this renewed interest in the genre and can not wait to see what films head our way. Not only are Evil Dead Rise, Renfield, and The Pope’s Exorcist showing in cinemas but we also have several horror titles hitting relevant platforms.
Weeks ago, I started to receive press releases surrounding the horror action film Hunt Club with Casper Van Dien and Mickey Rourke. I am a fan of Dien so I was curious to see this film after reading the synopsis. I reached out to them and they were kind enough to send a link for me to check out. I hit play immediately.
The storyline centers around a woman stuck at a pick-up spot diner after her girlfriend catches her sneaking glances at a boy and his father. They take her back to their camp where the young boy is out for his first deer hunt. She goes on to tell him about a game where you can win $100,000. She agrees and accompanies them. At first, it seems benign enough when she interacts with other rich female hunters and wives, but as the night deepens, it becomes clear that there is no ordinary hunt taking place. They stalk women, but what they don’t expect is that she came to reap revenge on the men who hunted down her daughter in one of their previous hunts.
Because Hunt Club is going to be compared to Surviving the Game and The Hunt, that’s what they did as well. The Hunt was slightly disappointing. I enjoy these Surviving the Game-type movies, but the political satire is not as sharp as I wanted it to be.
Even though Hunt Club does not win any points for originality, it does provide mindless fun while ironing out some of the issues I had with The Hunt.
For me, my favorite aspect of this film has to be the story. I happen to love Starship Troopers, Sleepy Hollow, and Modern Vampires so I was eager to see Casper Van Dien deliver another performance in such an overlooked gem. I enjoyed his character way more than American Pie’s Mena Suvari. I mean, she’s done many titles in the horror genre, from Rage: Carrie 2 to Don’t Blink, even American Horror Story. That was a pleasant surprise. It was nice to see her character, but she wasn’t the one I was expecting to shine. She definitely is another actress who goes unrecognized and I must say, her character was more in line with what I expected. The supporting class is just as superb but I would like to comment on Rourke. He doesn’t act anymore. But he works in a strange forgettable character that has done the same thing for the last ten or so years and in my opinion, his minimal use in the picture made the film better. And let’s be real. The more you overuse his presence, the cheaper the film feels.
The foretelling here is very much similar to The Hunt but here the characters are completely reversed. In Hunt Club, some rich men feel threatened by intelligent and powerful women taking over portions of their lives that were reserved for a man’s control. Now, they entice women over to their camp to hunt them. It’s during these excursions that they get the eventual dominance over women that they want. That is quite an interesting back story, but when you throw in the furious mother and her girlfriend, you get a decent, but typical, action horror movie that is still enjoyable to watch the first time around.
Lastly, the movie includes a multiple number of gore-filled and vicious death scenes. Whenever effects are done, they are done with precision and look amazing. It really does make the violence in the death scenes stand out. What is astonishing is that this movie has some of the worst visual effects I have ever seen. I don’t know if they zapped their budget but these fast and sloppy visuals are beyond horrible. At the end of the day, I was not disappointed with Hunt Club. The cast and concept of the story were great. It was gory and brutal, but as with so many other films, the visual effects were a real letdown. Give it a look.
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