Controversial film The Hunt is daring you to own the libs — or the right wing — by seeing it

The Hunt was “canceled” last fall. Now it’s back with a new trailer and a March release date.

Its release was canceled last September following right-wing media outcry, criticism over the violence it depicted in the aftermath of two mass shootings, and some tweets from President Trump. But now, it seems, The Hunt is back.

The “satirical social thriller,” as Universal Pictures characterized the film in a statement last fall, has a new trailer and a release date: March 13, or “Friday the 13th,” as the trailer proclaims. The latest marketing leans all the way into the controversy: “The most talked-about movie of the year is one nobody’s seen yet!” the text proclaims. (Technically it’s the most talked-about movie of last year, but time is a construct.)

The footage in the trailer doesn’t avoid the political underpinnings that people claimed would be present in the film, and its dialogue seems bent on evoking both ends of the political spectrum; it’s a political movie, but not an obviously partisan one. Early on, the premise appears to be that “liberal elites” hunt “regular people” for sport. Soon, buzzwords start popping up. “Don’t First Amendment me!” one character says. “I’m playing an Arab refugee, but I identify as white,” another character says later on. “I think that’s problematic, in some way.”

But the trailer’s grander aim seems to be skewering the reactions the movie elicited in September, maybe more than advertising the movie itself. “It wasn’t real,” a character played by Hilary Swank insists, which could be taken as a statement about the characters hunting one another, but also about the idea that a movie would simply present liberal elites hunting red-staters without irony or a twist. As if to underline that statement, later, in voiceover, we hear, “We were joking!”

And to anyone who follows entertainment news who’s thinking about The Hunt in good faith, it was always clear that the elites-hunting-regular-people setup would ultimately involve some sort of upending reveal. The film was co-written by the famously twisty (and unusually nuanced) Damon Lindelof, who’s still best known for Lost but whose most recent project, HBO’s Watchmen, steered far away from easy political stereotyping.

And yet, as the trailer swipes sideways at the reactionaries, it also hints that something more is going on in the story than it’s currently willing to disclose. At one point, Hilary Swank sneers at Betty Gilpin, one of the “regular” people. “You actually believed we were hunting human beings for sport,” Swank says.

“But … you are,” Gilpin responds. And Swank merely smiles.

So what’s actually going on?

It’s always a bad idea to judge a film by its trailer. But Universal screened The Hunt for a few writers before the new trailer dropped, and judging by comments they’ve made — Scott Mendelson wrote at Forbes that it’s a “harmless exploitation action-comedy” — it’s a relatively decent representation of the film. The trailer sells The Hunt as an irreverent, somewhat campy horror-thriller, the kind of movie we’re used to seeing from its studio Blumhouse Productions, which also produced Get Out, Happy Death Day, and Ma, among others. I haven’t seen The Hunt yet, but I’ve heard through the grapevine that it more or less tries to play to both “sides” of the political divide.

Yet the trailer is also trying to sell The Hunt as a dare to moviegoers, using the movie’s bad press and delayed release to attract audiences — not so much on the merits of its story as on the idea that it will make somebody mad if you go see The Hunt. Who will get mad? It’s hard to say. Maybe the right-wing media pundits and the president, who said they were upset about a movie they claimed would inspire violence against conservatives, ordinary people in the American heartland. Or maybe the people who will get mad are smug liberals, who were upset about the film’s release being pulled, or who will be surprised to see the tables turned on them. Or maybe critics will get mad, if they end up not liking the film.

But who cares if you’re owning the libs or owning Laura Ingraham? In 2020, the national mood seems to be that what’s really important is somebody gets owned, and that it’s not you.

And in that kind of climate, The Hunt’s style of marketing seems inevitable in — it borrows tactics from partisan product-peddling and political fundraising. One could argue that Joker benefited from some of the same sentiment, with people going to see it not only because they wanted to see a movie about a popular comic book character but also because doing so was some kind of a statement. The John Travolta-starring Gotti issued a similar challenge in 2018 by darkly warning that “critics don’t want you to see it” and “the question is why??” (The answer is “it sucks,” but by all means, knock yourself out.) Christian movies have used similar marketing tactics for years, telling potential viewers that seeing their movie would “send a message” to Hollywood.

Universal Pictures

Of course, nobody is going to get owned if you go see The Hunt. You’ll be giving money to Universal Pictures, and the studio will have a good opening weekend. It’s Hollywood, ultimately, that will win.

But it’s a smart move on Universal’s part to capitalize on a months-old controversy to get you to pony up to see the film. The right-wing pundits and Trump tweets just amounted to free advertising for the film, which many people now have actually heard of and might go see. The “cancellation” of The Hunt’s release was never going to be permanent. Through protesting the film, its would-be detractors turned it into a potential cultural phenomenon — a headline rather than a footnote.

Which The Hunt’s marketers know full well. Near the end of the new trailer, Swank smirks slightly. “You wanted it to be real,” she says. “So, you decided it was.”

The Hunt opens in theaters on March 13.