"Hunter Hunter" a brutally effective, chillingly visceral gut-punch

Hunter Hunter (2020)

A brutally effective survival horror film in the spare clothing of Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace,” “Hunter Hunter” suggests that the hunters can become the hunted. Writer-director Shawn Linden traps audiences into thinking they will be getting one kind of film. It’s startling and ruthless the first way, but nothing can prepare one for the direction it takes, followed by a shockingly nasty and haunting final note. “Hunter Hunter” can be a grimly unpleasant and nihilistic experience, but it keeps you hooked and then packs an unforgettably savage punch that fully earns it.

Joe (Devon Sawa) and wife Anne (Camille Sullivan) live off the grid as fur trappers in a cabin nestled within the Manitoba wilderness in the 1990s. Joe shows their 12-year-old daughter Renée (Summer H. Howell) the ropes in how to hunt and skin animals for meat and shoot a .22, while Anne worries how their unsustainable way of life and selling of pelts will help them make ends meet. When Joe and Renée make their way along their trapline, they find a raccoon leg caught in the trap, signaling the return of a wolf that keeps stealing their food supply. Determined to catch the predator that may not be a wolf, Joe leaves his family, while Anne, Renée, and their dog must survive on their own. That becomes a little harder when an injured stranger (played by a menacing-before-even-waking-up Nick Stahl) ends up on their land to assure Anne they should have moved to the city.

Writer-director Shawn Linden deliberately draws the viewer into the hard life that Joe has made for his family. Linden sets up a red herring, only to raise the stakes when we know what Joe knows that Anne and Renée do not. By separating the family, Anne cannot even turn to help from the wolf by the local Fish and Wildlife officers (Gabriel Daniels, Lauren Cochrane) who are more curious about why the family is living in the forest. Even though it’s by accident when Anne shoots a fawn and doesn’t want to waste the meat, Renee then shows her mother how to skin an animal for dinner (and this skill will matter later on). 

“Hunter Hunter” is a deceptively simple slow-burn of a film, making the payoff even more cathartic. Former Tiger Beat heartthrob Devon Sawa (2019’s “The Fanatic”) brings a gruff dedication to Joe, who will not sway from his way of life even if his family is close to starvation, but it is Camille Sullivan, as Anne, who carries most of the film and undergoes the most dramatic character arc. Playing a hunter’s wife who does all of the cabin duties—fetching for water is an anxiety attack when knowing there’s a wolf out there—Sullivan’s Anne is never a nag, and her decisions always make sense, logically and emotionally. Cued to an unexpected musical choice (“Hypnotized Narcissist” by Tales of Murder and Dust), the film’s ending is chillingly visceral, gutting you and making you sit with the unsparing pain and irreversible actions of one of the characters. Best to know as little as possible going in, "Hunter Hunter" is bleak-as-hell stuff that brands itself into your bulging eyeballs.

Grade: B +

IFC Midnight is releasing “Hunter Hunter” (94 min.) in select theaters, on digital and on demand on December 18, 2020.