Note: Getting a bunch of e-mails to review “The Hunt” since it’s stirring up all this controversy. Well, I already reviewed it a few months ago. Going to repost the review now. Enjoy!
Genre: Thriller/Social Commentary
Logline: A group of rich liberal elites drug and kidnap ten rednecks, drop them in the middle of nowhere, and start hunting them.
About: Giant spec this one! It’s written by Damon Lindelof and one of his top writers on The Leftovers, Nick Cuse. As Blumhouse expands its horror empire into new sub-genres, The Hunt is one of these new social commentary horror-thriller movies that are starting to make their move in the industry. This is a great sub-genre to be writing in right now. Everyone wants a piece of it.
Writers: Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof
Details: 90 pages (2-14-18 draft)
We are in the midst of a revolution!
Asides to the reader. Personal opinions in the description. Over-the-top writing. Controversial subject matter. Micro page counts.
Welcome to screenwriting in 2019. With Get Home Safe and now, The Hunt, screenwriting will never be the same (I’m half-serious, by the way).
Remember in my newsletter when I said that the next big thing is going to be fun social commentary thrillers? It looks like Damon Lindelof received my newsletter, grabbed his time machine from Lost, and went back to [checks date on script], February 14th, 2018 and wrote this, the sneaky little devil.
The Hunt updates one of the oldest story ideas out there – hunting humans for sport. But it adds a quirky modern twist. The people being hunted were baaaad boys and girls on Twitter. So did they deserve it?
We start off in a plane. A nice plane. First class.
Then, out of nowhere, a man stumbles up from the coach section, mumbling like an insane person. The first class occupants slaughter him dead. Who the heck was that and why did they just kill him? The Hunt asks that question a lot. No, I’m talking literally here. Every other sentence is, “What just happened?? Who was that?? What’s going on??”
Cut to the middle of a field. Ten rednecks awaken. They’re all gagged. The only thing they see besides each other is a giant crate. The leader, our hero (we’re literally told she’s our hero), Daisy, moves towards the crate to see what’s inside. BUT THEN HER HEAD IS BLOWN OPEN! Turns out she’s not our hero. The rednecks scatter! It doesn’t take them long to realize that they’re being hunted.
After a few more are killed, we settle in on “Hairline,” a hick with a receding hairline, “Lumberjane,” and “Kid Rock.” They’re able to escape the immediate hunting area and find a road. Road = civilization = safety is the operating thesis. As luck would have it, half a mile up is a mom and pop gas station! They hurry inside and explain to Mom and Pop what’s happening. Mom and Pop let them use the phone to call the police. And then Kid Rock opens some Ritz crackers to find… sand? Uh-oh. Bam bam bam bam!!!! Mom and Pop blow them all away. They’re part of the hunt!!!
Mom and Pop then get a call that one of the hicks, “Crystal,” is on her way there. “She’s not armed. Have a little fun with her.” Except Crystal doesn’t run in and start freaking out. She casually walks up to the counter and orders a pack of cigarettes. Mom and Pop look at each other. Uhhhh… they’ve never seen this before. Crystal is cool as a cucumber. After paying for the cigs, Crystal leaps over the counter and brutally kills both of them. Crystal is the wrong hick to have brought to the hunt.
Crystal bumps into another survivor, Don, and the two compare notes. From what they can gather, the hunters are rich liberal elites who targeted all of them because they promoted hate-speech and gun violence and lots of other conservative talking points on social media. Not long after, they spot train tracks and hop the next train that comes along. This is when they learn they’re in freaking Croatia! Once they get to a station, they demand to talk to Americans. Lucky for them, someone from the local American consulate shows up to take them home. I think you’re catching on here. Crystal isn’t so sure about this dude so she puts a bullet in his head. She realizes that if she’s going to get out of here alive, she needs to find the snake. And when she does? Chop its head off.
So many opinions!!!
There’s a good script in here. Somewhere. The problem is that Cuse and Lindelof are trying SOOOO HARRRRD to make you like their screenplay, they keep losing focus. No fewer than FOUR times they introduce you to “our hero” (they actually say, “This is our hero”) only for that hero to be blown to pieces (“I guess that’s not our hero.”). They’re trying to be edgy and fun, bringing back some of that old-school 90s spec flavor. But it’s too clunky and it gets tired fast.
Here’s something all screenwriters need to know. When you’re whizzing and banging and yelling and asiding and overwriting your screenplay, it’s almost always an indication that the story isn’t good enough. That’s why you’re doing it – purposely or subconsciously – because you don’t believe the story itself is entertaining enough.
Which is why the overwriting in The Hunt was so frustrating. This story has legs. Plenty of them. It didn’t need all the whiz-bangery. The approach is also confusing considering the team that wrote it. Lindelof is a name that everyone in Hollywood knows. He doesn’t need a bunch of fireworks to catch your attention like an unknown newbie does. So why the try-hard writing style?
If you like this style of writing or can overlook it, there’s fun to be had. More importantly, it does what I said you should be doing in my newsletter. Provide social commentary. But make it entertaining. By doing that, you promote respectful conversation afterwards. People are more likely to smile and laugh as they’re giving opinions on where outrage culture has gone. But if you write something like Get Home Safe, which is pure rage writing, all that does is make people mad. You leave the movie and you’re pissed off and you don’t even know why (which is, sadly, how we leave most news articles these days). That doesn’t get us any closer to tolerance. Which is why I like this approach better.
But yeah, if you can ignore all the aside-writing, the script does a really nice job keeping you guessing. For example, I had no idea where things were going once they jumped on the train. I thought, “Not even this Hunt Community can create an infrastructure that includes a train. So where’s this going to lead?” And then there was Crystal. It’s kind of amazing that we’re so attached to her considering the fact that she isn’t introduced until page 37. I think it’s because by that point we’d built up so much hatred for the hunters that we were pumped to finally have a worthy opponent. That combined with the mystery of who she was and why she was always one step ahead of the hunters kept you intrigued.
The script has a number of good sequences in it. One of my favorites was when Crystal arrived at the Mom and Pop gas station. For screenwriting newbies, pay attention, because what I’m about to tell you is gold. HOW MUCH INFORMATION you give the reader preceding a scene has a drastic effect on how that scene plays out. You see that in practice here as we get to experience the same scene twice, once with no knowledge, and then once with all the knowledge.
Note how the first time our hunted walk in, the big moment occurs when Mom and Pop turn out to be bad and blow everyone away. But that excitement only equals 15 seconds of screentime. With Crystal’s scene, the excitement clock begins the second she walks through the door. We know she’s in danger and she, supposedly, does not. As a result, we get three full minutes of entertainment as opposed to 15 seconds. Cuse and Lindelof also add a second level of entertainment by having Crystal act so blasé. Not only are we unnerved, but Mom and Pop are too. Why is this woman who’s being hunted casually buying cigarettes?
If only Cuse and Lindelof would’ve put down the coffee… and the Monster drinks… and the Red Bull… and the 4 Hour Energy. They’re too hyped up here, banging the keys like 600 pound gorillas to make sure that EVERY LINE IS THE MOST EPIC LINE EVER! I’m all about keeping the reader’s attention. But there are at least some of us left on this earth who don’t have ADD. Sheesh.
Was The Hunt perfect? No. BUT. The plot kept me on my toes and Crystal was such a strong character, she tipped the scales in making this worth a read. Actually, it’s definitely worth reading because fun social commentary thrillers are the next hot trend and spec screenwriters need to know what that looks like from one of the top screenwriters in the business.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I know I talk about this all the time, but I have to bring it up again because it literally saved the screenplay for me. Crystal casually walking into the fake gas station and outsmarting the hunters was the moment I became invested in the story. Before that, I was on the fence. But it’s impossible for me not to love a character after they cleverly outsmart the bad guys. That’s how powerful this screenwriting tool is. I talk about it in this article here. It just goes to show that if you ace the right moments in your script (a great hero moment early on that makes us love them, for example), you can make up for the moments you fail.
