Hunt Club (2023) – Film Review
Director: Elizabeth Blake-Thomas
Cast: Mena Suvari, Mickey Rourke, Casper Van Dien
Certificate: 15
By Roger Crow
For decades The Most Dangerous Game, aka The Hounds of Zaroff, has been remade by Hollywood in countless incarnations. Jean Claude Van Damme’s Hard Target had a bash 30 years ago, and more recently Liam Hemsworth and Jimmy Akingbola gave us a rather good spin on the usual formula.
Now British filmmaker Elizabeth Blake-Thomas helms this violent revenge thriller which stars Mena Suvari, Mickey Rourke and Casper Van Dien.
With $100k at stake, a group of men are gearing up for a wild weekend away on an extreme hunt.
Cassandra is a strong mum whose daughter is missing, so when the tough-talking Tessa enters her life, things look up. However, a ‘chance’ encounter with Carter and his son Jackson changes everything.
Invited to join the hunt, Cassandra jumps at the chance to win the prize money, but when she gets to the island, she discovers the prize is more sinister.
“Yee-haw! terror”
The island is full of scared young women who are about to be hunted and killed.
Best described as an exploitation movie with A-levels, the script feels it has to put the generic bad guys’ motives in context before they embark on their reign of ‘yee-haw!’ terror. So we get a lengthy scene of Van Dien’s rotten big cheese explaining why men have been emasculated by women, and in an attempt to claw back a sense of self-worth, alpha blokes must hunt down defenceless women not wearing much.
Of course (spoiler alert) the guys eventually get their comeuppance, not least for being stereotypically awful, and you may be left wondering why you wasted almost 90 minutes of your life on this garbage.
Incidentally, it apparently cost $4.5million to make and grossed less than $7,000 worldwide. I’m guessing the mid-August UK release will generate a few extra quid at the very least.
Personally, I’d say the first rule of Hunt Club is you don’t watch Hunt Club. Sorry, Casper, Mena and Mickey. You deserve so much more than this.
