We asked the director to break down the jokes in the controversial new movie out this Friday
In the new movie “The Hunt,” the blood runs red and blue.
The action thriller, a bombastic satire about liberal “elites” making a sport of trying to kill a dozen conservative “deplorables,” attempts to expose how red-state and blue-state Americans have demonized each other. It also calls itself a farce, with violence so extreme it borders on cartoon—like when a character is not only skewered by spikes but blown in half, too.
“What if the craziest conspiracy theories that you would think about another group of people were true?” asks director Craig Zobel. “Right now, it feels like what maybe the healthiest thing we could do would be to start to laugh at this stuff a little bit.”
The film opens in theaters on Friday. Universal Pictures canceled the original September 2019 debut in the wake of last summer’s mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. The film prompted an anti-Hollywood broadside from President Trump, who accused the movie’s creators of trying to create chaos. WSJ Newsletter What's News
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Nothing about “The Hunt” has changed since then except the marketing. Instead of a straightforward horror movie, the studio now is pushing it as comic social commentary. Scathing quotes about its divisiveness fill the movie poster—the studio’s signal that the film’s premise is not meant to be taken seriously and viewers should judge the result for themselves.
In the film, rich liberals have abducted a group of unsophisticated conservatives who believe in outlandish conspiracy theories and own lots of guns. The hostages are brought to a remote area and given weapons to defend themselves, but most don’t stand a chance.
A hostage named Crystal (Betty Gilpin) is smarter than everybody. She takes on the hunt’s ringleader Athena (Hilary Swank), who opposes cultural appropriation and gendered language but is OK with using a high heel to gouge out a stranger’s eyeball.
With its culture-war stereotypes, the movie attempts to make fun of everyone, left and right. The only neutral party is a pink pig. Mr. Zobel breaks down a few of his choice takedowns in this edited conversation. Warning: We’re about to spoil three jokes. Hilary Swank plays Athena, left, a ruthless “liberal” hunting people like Ms. Gilpin’s Crystal. Photo: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Butt of the joke: Blue states
A liberal couple pose as proprietors of a mom-and-pop gas station and store in small-town Arkansas. Certain concession items in the shop are poisoned. The husband grabs a soda from a refrigerated case, momentarily forgetting it might be deadly. His wife screams at him to stop, frantic. He spits out the drink, thinking it must be tainted. “There are 43 grams of sugar in that soda,” she says.
Mr. Zobel: “The gas station is where the premise of the movie is in its most sharp relief. In a world where I know what the Hollywood elite would say, I definitely don’t feel worried about the humor that we can aim at ourselves. I wasn’t necessarily holding back in the other direction as much as just not finding that to be really as funny. I have seen enough hillbilly stereotypes. With the elites, there were new jokes there.” Director Craig Zobel with crew members on the set of ‘The Hunt.’ Photo: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS Butt of the joke: Red states
Crystal and another hostage jump on a train, where they meet a group of refugees hiding in the same boxcar. Crystal’s fellow hostage accuses the refugees of being paid crisis actors to further a liberal immigration agenda. He wants them rounded up.
Mr. Zobel: “In the initial conversations about the story we were talking about internet conspiracy theorists and that was where we found the humor. Oftentimes we would escalate the joke, looking at the characters’ assumptions about other characters and pushing those beats further. Whenever it felt judgmental it wasn’t funny, so we would throw that away and go toward the direction that would make sure it was absurd. I was really trying to be inclusive of making fun of everyone instead of critiquing a particular idea.” Butt of the joke: America
Crystal storms the bunker where the captors are holed up. A liberal in a get-up fit for a British fox hunt suffers an arrow to the stomach. Crystal aims her gun to finish the job, but another hostage tells her not to shoot because the target is a woman. Crystal stops, asks the bleeding liberal if she thinks women should be treated differently than men. Trapped in her own belief system, the woman replies that they should not. Crystal pulls the trigger.
Mr. Zobel: “That’s a purple joke because it starts with everyone rolling their eyes at a man saying the liberal should be spared because she’s a woman. That’s a big, chauvinist point of view, right? Then the liberal on the floor, even when faced with a life-or-death choice, she still rolls her eyes and scoffs at the chauvinism. It’s funnier the more stuck in your beliefs you are.”
Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com