You may remember The Hunt from ages ago when the horror movie which features a group of conservatives being hunted by lefties was first set to be released. Conservatives condemned it, including President Trump, and Blumhouse Pictures suspended the release. Now that nothing is in theaters and the box office is dead, The Hunt was rereleased on Friday the 13th under the “What have you got to lose” strategy.

The Hunt is currently at over $5 million and unlikely to ever hit $10 million. Probably not a win even for a movie with a small budget.

And now we don’t have to speculate about its contents.

The premise, clearly a takeoff on Pizzagate, is that a group of conservatives falsely accused a group of influential lefties of plotting to kill conservatives, and the social media firestorm got them fired. The lefties retaliate by actually abducting and hunting those conservatives they believe are responsible. The heroine was abducted by accident and is not actually one of those responsible.

Everyone except her is a set of obnoxious stereotypes, which raises the question of whom this movie was made for, except true independents who despise both conservatives and liberals. That’s the only real perspective that the movie has. And it’s sloppy about it.

The rest is the usual “horrible deaths on the run” fare of a certain kind of horror movie.

There are a few clever satirical touches, but mostly The Hunt plays the odd trick of condemning cancel culture by attributing it to conservatives. While there have been some cases of conservative social media canceling people, the disproportionate weight of the thing has gone the other way.

Are the victims here the abducted conservatives, who embody one obnoxious stereotype or another, or the lefty CEOs who were framed for making some obnoxious jokes, and then decided to make those jokes real? There aren’t any victims or heroes. 

Tucker and Dale vs Evil already did a great job of commenting on the blue state prejudice against rural people and what happens when people act on those prejudices. It was shocking precisely because Hollywood had spent half a century churning out the opposite message.

The Hunt wants to pretend it has a message, but it panders aimlessly, reducing both sides to thin stereotypes, shelling out the Lost producers’ idea of what conservatives are like based on spending 5 minutes on Twitter (or even worse, the HotAir comments section) and how they think conservatives see liberals based on the same thing.

It was an obvious cash grab that didn’t turn up any actual money.