Hunt Club brings to mind a certain short story that you probably read in high school. Interestingly, Casper Van Dien is already in a Most Dangerous Game film adaptation — and now, Hunt Club has just hit the masses, and one could argue it’s a sort of updated spin on the classic short story. There’s even a Roku TV show based on Richard Connell’s O.G. tale, which already has a second season in store.
This time around, however, the tale is laced with women empowerment, which may be one of few rewarding features in the new dark and twisted B-movie version, Hunt Club. Besides seeing the held-captive females fight back against horrible men who have trapped them for literal sport, the toxic male banter that fills up the rest of this violent project may make you cringe all the way. Here’s our take.
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Cheering for the Female “Good Guys”
Hunt Club stars two Oscar Nominees: Mena Suvari (American Beauty) and Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), who previously co-starred in Tony Scott’s Domino in 2005, a far superior film for that matter. Hunt Club also features a diverse ensemble, including Maya Stojan (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D), a standout Will Peltz (13 Minutes), Jessica Belkin (The Orville), Jeremy London (Demigod), Jason London (The Rage: Carrie 2), David Lipper (who also wrote the film) and Kipp Tribble (ReBroken). But it’s Mena Suvari and Casper Van Dien who hold the uneven and often hard-to-watch B-movie together.
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The quite-simple storyline focuses on Cassandra (Suvari), who right off the bat breaks up with her girlfriend and is desperate to find help. This happens a diner, where Carter (Van Dien) and his son Jackson (Will Peltz) are enjoying a meal and witness the breakup. The fatherly role comes quite naturally to Van Dien (Heart of a Champion) these days, and it’s fun seeing him offer Jackson some “fatherly advice” in terms of speaking to ladies properly.
But then, it all turns dark — in a not-so-cool sort of way. Carter offers Cassandra the chance to win $100,000 if she participates in the “hunt” on his island. Cassandra doesn’t really ask for more details, which is head-scratching at first. But a somewhat clever third-act reveal explains her ulterior motives for blindly following Carter to the island of doom. Once there, she soon finds other women who are there for the cash have been literally tied up, only to be released as the “hunted.” With the help of a couple of other clever captives, Cassandra turns the tables on the men, showing that women can be better hunters.
“We had more women in this crew than a lot of movies,” Casper Van Dien recently told MovieWeb. “And you know, it’s women-empowerment in the end. It’s a woman’s revenge, empowerment movie, but the process to get there is pretty intense and difficult to watch as a man. Even for me, it was really hard. But we had the screening, and the audience at the screening was mostly women, two-thirds were women. And they were shouting so loud when the men were taken out. I was like, ‘I was just acting!'”
Household Names Can’t Save the Project
Latigo Films
“This film was different from some of my past works, as it dealt more with stunts and adult themes,” director Elizabeth Blake-Thomas said in a statement. “Working with stunt coordinators and stunt doubles, as well as actors doing their own stunts, was such fun. Experiencing the sort of dance that comes with stunts was a new aspect that I am happy to add to my directing repertoire.”
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It’s refreshing to hear that so many women worked behind the camera on this project, but at the end of the day, Hunt Club’s effort to put a clever spin on that aforementioned Most Dangerous Game tale falls a bit flat. The whole second act is seemingly devoted to drunk rich dudes and hicks tossing F-bombs at each other again and again as they ready themselves for the hunt — which thankfully takes a vengeful turn for the better as Cassandra and others start taking out said dudes one-by-one.
Seeing household names like Van Dien and Rourke share the screen a couple of times is fun — especially knowing behind-the-scenes that their own banter was improvised. But they don’t share the screen enough, and it’s clear that Suvari deserves a better script that allows her character to be fleshed out a bit more.
And on that note — there are indeed a couple scenes where Will Peltz’s Jackson character is trying to pursue Cassandra as a love interest. It’s an interesting B-story, since Jackson is also supposed to be making his dad proud by ultimately “hunting” Cassandra and others. He’s certainly caught in the middle of a deadly predicament, but these little twists and turns aren’t enough to save the film at large. For all the Casper Van Dien fans out there, you might prefer a thriller like Daughter instead.
From Uncork’d Entertainment, Hunt Club is now available on DVD, on demand and digital.
You can view the original article HERE.
