The United States is in a fraught time. Whereas presidents were usually called upon to maintain civil discourse, it is a time when hate crimes are up. The man who would be elected once told a rally that if they saw a protester to “knock the crap out of them,” and that “I will pay the legal fees.” How can anyone hope to maintain order when he hasn’t really backed down from this statement, asking citizens to give into a rage that doesn’t benefit anyone? Considering that every day brings with it a risible offense that only shows how polarized things are as a country, it’s difficult to suggest that order is on the horizon. No, we had it once but in order to maintain it, we now need to call a truce that neither side will agree to because of the grudges made in the last four years. It’s brutal, ugly, and the new definition of America.
Brutal times call for brutal commentaries. There is no room for a weakling to join hands across America and sing “Kumbaya.” Yes, I would love to do that, but there is a rage festering under the surface, and it’s difficult for art to not reflect this. Two films, in particular, have taken their satire into vulgar places, creating these pulpy exploitation movies where the violence pours from the screen like a leaky faucet. You can tell how angry everyone involved is because they strive for an urgency that is so rooted in a moment that it sacrifices subtlety. It’d rather just tell you the targets instead of dancing around a metaphor that could possibly be misconstrued. No, Assassination Nation (2018) and The Hunt (2020) want to murder your senses.
There was a time when director Craig Zobel’s The Hunt wasn’t looking too hot. It was going to be the film forever shelved because it was “too dangerous.” The president would be the first to tell you sight-unseen that it was going to attack the conservative mindset. While it was no way to judge art, it forever set a standard that Zobel could’ve never achieved. This wasn’t Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). This was just another movie about gun violence in a time where it’s become trendy to make allegorical “us vs. them” takes. Nobody went after other murder-spree films of recent like Death Wish (2018) because its advertising wasn’t selling a story of the lower-class mowing down the elites. The good news is that it did wonders for their marketing campaign, with the main poster highlighting quotes from dissenting opinions with the main text saying “The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen. Decide for yourself Sept. 27 March 13.”
So, was it worth it?
When you ban a movie, you’re expecting something naughty to poke its head out when it finally makes the light of day. It’s like watching A Clockwork Orange (1971) and seeing the ultraviolence. You understand why it was banned. It’s so disturbing and could insight bad behavior.
What does The Hunt have to compare to? If we’re being honest with ourselves, The Hunger Games franchise had a more nuanced take on this exact subject with a PG-13 rating. It is a modern retelling of Richard Connell’s piercing short story “The Most Dangerous Game” that basically substitutes the ambiguity with the modern political climate. The death is supposed to emphasize how trigger-happy everyone is, driven by paranoia and an inability to listen. There are always other targets that are less righteous than the ones defending their freedoms. This would be fine if the Blumhouse name brought with it any madcap insanity, but it only comes out in spurts.
The rest is a walking billboard of character tropes that frankly are some of the worst things that co-writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse wrote. Together they wrote some of the finest TV with HBO's The Leftovers, understanding the impact of grief on those surviving a rapture. Take away their nuance, and you get The Hunt. Despite Betty Gilpin giving her all, this is so bare-bones that it never allows one character to matter. It shoots them all dead before letting them become more than buzzwords that may or may not be as ridiculous as the rapping granny in two decades.
These aren’t characters, they’re caricatures and not even fun ones to be around. Ethan Suplee plays Gary, who may as well be an InfoWars stand-in spouting conspiracies. He’s been so great in other things that it’s disheartening to hear him reduced to a paranoid nut who at one point picks a fight with people he perceives to be faking their terrible conditions. It’s all ridiculous, but it lacks any sense of irony or charm. Gilpin’s best survival tool isn’t a gun but the fact that she’s the only one with access to a decent plot. Everyone else is worse than a background character on Hannah-Barbera.
With all due respect, this movie NEEDED that initial ban to have any lingering relevance. Without it, it’s just a bland movie that tries to poke holes in the modern political divide. Sure, it takes just as many potshots at liberalism, but they’re not interesting or exciting takes. Even the pulpy moments that could’ve made this dumb satire rejuvenating exists more in a sheepish quality, barely within the frame as the camera cuts to something less dangerous. There’s very little fang in this movie, and even those are more likely to gnaw on your arm because it can.
That should be the case with Assassination Nation which doesn’t even have the patience to have people bestow controversy on it. A quick search on Google will reveal that they didn’t have much trouble before or after the film’s release. At most, there were complaints that the advertising was too disturbing for Facebook. Okay, that’s…something. Whereas the danger enhanced The Hunt’s profile, it hurt Assassination Nation’s box office. It barely existed before being ushered out of theaters, only really ever being brought up when discussing director Sam Levinson’s follow-up project, the HBO TV series Euphoria.
Though where The Hunt had a timidity in both its use of violence and brains, it feels like Levinson is so eager to shock you as some undergraduate of Jean-Luc Godard and Quentin Tarantino. The opening sequence is an art collage that is so confrontational as it quickly cuts through the “Trigger warning” of various terrible elements inside. It’s a technique that Godard used to titillate viewers, creating this deeper understanding of political commentary in films like Masculin Feminin (1966). It’s a blasé throwaway moment in an art collage so manic that it’s sometimes hard to find the realism that it’s going for.
Levinson knows this. It’s not an act of unprofessionalism. It’s his dive into the cultural zeitgeist in a fictional city of Salem. It’s an era where most communication is done by text messages and the most damning thing that somebody could do is hack into your private account. The story starts off with a doozy of taboo subjects, including a profane act that gets the principal fired as a crowd yells "lock him up!." Many doubt that it could happen to them as they label their former principal a pervert. They would never get caught in a compromising position, and if so they wouldn’t be the social pariahs that would forever be branded with the digital scarlet letter.
The film is not subtle and it’s one of the most unpleasant, uncomfortable movies involving teens to be released in years. At no point does a scene go by without feeling the need to push buttons. A lot of the action involves cruelty to women, and Levinson uses it as fuel for the eventual snap. Following a break-in murder scene that is a deftly handled long-take over two floors of a house, they snap. They discover that the police are wont to do anything and everyone else has turned on them. It’s the most vicious act of slut-shaming as a group of angry men hide behind masks and cheer on their ability to take down such vile beings.
There’s also an underlying current that may explain why anyone would go insane during these times. While it’s peppered with contemporary commentary like a crowd chanting to the principal that they want him locked up, it’s largely a retelling of two texts. It’s Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlett Letter” set to homicidal, while other aspects feel more clearly taken from The Salem Witch Trials. Even then, all of this imagery is meant to reflect how women feel helpless in a modern circumstance, especially as women growing up in a T.M.I. generation where people have numbed to violence thanks to the internet.
It even allows for a perspective that feels rarely seen in teenage tales of slut-shaming like this. Transgender actress Hari Nef plays Bex and is given a substantial role. She is just as much a victim as her girl group who wander the campus, feeling the comments attacking them like daggers. It’s almost underplayed, save for a moment where Bex is forced to comment on how the LGBT community feels pressured to be positive role models. Otherwise, she’s as ruthless as the others never played for pandering and give the film something more. In just one film, Levinson has done more for the transgender community than the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done in 12 years, which only adds to the specialness of this role. This isn’t just a white heterosexual tale of America’s plight. It’s one where everybody’s involved.
Also, if you’re going to make a satire pointing out America’s ugliness, why not just go vulgar yourself? The Hunt feels too refined, and it hurts any poignancy. By having Assassination Nation at all times using style to present the jaded world of teenagers, it creates something richer. It may be too aggressive for some, but the occasional three-way split-screen (eat you heart out, Brian De Palma) or moments played out entirely through text message add an authenticity that the film needs. By the end, the ugliness and violence feel warranted because there has been build-up and enough persona stakes to make the audience have that implicit desire to see a chauvinist get a bullet to the head. In a lot of unnerving ways, the film explains the madness of a shooter that it loses meaning. We’re all mad. The only problem is that some are just antagonistic, doing it “for the lols.” It’s a vicious cycle without reason, and the film gets to the heart of that.
And besides, Assassination Nation is so self-involved with its style that it even has a better ending. Nay, it may be one of the best endings for a film this shameless. A marching band, lead by the victimized Em (Abra) triumphantly crosses the neighborhoods where they had just murdered the misogynists who stood in their way. What is their song of choice? Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop.” Levinson may be too obsessed with style for his own good, but the ability to make his final scene play as both a hilarious punchline and the feeling that women won’t be victims any longer shows some brilliance that a more reserved movie would shy away from.
That is the issue with The Hunt. There is nothing to latch onto by the end. You’re just left with base opinions and buzzwords that you’ve been hearing on the news for eons now. It’s unpleasant in reality and plain annoying in fiction. There’s no substance beyond that. For all of Assassination Nation’s faults, it refuses to go down smoothly. It wants you to have an opinion about it somehow. You feel gross watching it, both because of its subject matter and because you understand how true some of it is to society’s downfall. It beats you up and does it with a smile. Because of its unrelenting tone and pace, it’s likely to exist forever as a cult classic, maybe even dissected as the “misunderstood” unspoken power of truth to our modern times. Or it’s just really annoying teenagers participating in the T.M.I. tradition of life. Even then, it’s more representative of an America that isn’t photogenic and something you wish you could just forget about. But alas, we all have to try and stay civil and deal with it.
All I know is that dozens of images from Assassination Nation will stick in your head. Not one will for The Hunt.
Comments
Post a Comment