With a snazzy Trans Am and snazzier mistress, big-city New York bizman Ray Harper (a feature-debuting Omar Tucci) drives to rural Crawford County to convince the local yokels of a $150 million project to develop their rural farmland. This pitch goes over as well as a Scientology service, but said mistress, Brooke (fellow first-timer Marlene Malcolm), cheers his spirits by gifting him a brand-new compass. Foreshadowing alert!
So Ray and Brooke are kidnapped by a trio of rednecks who pray for societal collapse and whose leader, TJ, looks uncannily like multishirted serpent Steve Bannon. “What’s this aboot?” asks Ray, revealing the movie in all its Canadianness, as the couple is boated to a nearby heavily wooded island for a lovely picnic.
Totally kidding; this ain’t no picnic. Instead, Ray and Brooke become unwilling participants in the most dangerous game: the one in which they’re hunted like animals — a Death Hunt, one might say.
Quoth TJ, “Once you’ve hunted humans, animals just don’t cut it,” so their craven disregard for life at least was built with purpose. Director Neil Mackay (the similar Battleground) needn’t have shown the Confederate flag for us to understand that TJ (Terry McDonald, Mackay’s Sixty Minutes to Midnight) and his gang are evil, but I’ll take it.
As the game begins, Ray doesn’t run so much as lightly shuffle toward a pleasant jog. Brooke fares better — much better — even in capri pants and a cami crop trop. With squibs aplenty, Death Hunt is simple, lean and adds nothing unexplored to the subgenre. Still, I give Mackay credit for not taking this into I Spit on Your Grave territory; refreshingly, rape isn’t even on the minds of the men — much to the bafflement of Brooke, who’s told by an offended captor, hilariously, “We’re married!”
In part because Mackay has stripped the premise to its core elements, but more because Malcolm gives it everything she’s got, this flick works. It’s also beautifully photographed, which rings of irony considering it’s “aboot” the ugliest of humanity. —Rod Lott