by Julianne Snow:
Synopsis:
Detective Le Saint is charged with protecting a police informant and schedules a rendezvous with him at an abandoned fort in the woods. What he doesn’t know is that the place also serves as a meeting point for a group of hunters – whose prey aren’t animals.
Review:
I recently had the opportunity to watch the movie The Hunters. I admit that I was sucked in by the hook on my channel guide which reads:
Alice and her friends are approaching the end of the school year, when their dead-end lives will end and the chance of a new life will begin. Before heading off to college, they spend one last day together in the woods, the one part of town that has always been off-limits to them growing up. As they stumble upon what they thought was an abandoned fort, only to find the walls dripping in blood and decomposing body parts lying around, they are startled to learn they are now a part of an undercover investigation. After being told to get out of the woods, they realize they’re trapped, for the hunters who call the fort home, never let anyone out alive.
So as you can see, there is already a bit of a difference in what I expected to watch and what I ended up watching. Sure Alice and her friends make an appearance at the fort, but it’s very late in the game and they certainly didn’t find any dripping blood or decomposing bodies.
Despite the bait and switch, I found myself enjoying the movie. It’s a deeply disturbing movie of a group of deeply disturbed men who use an abandoned fort as a base for their games. While the movie was somewhat slow to start, once the action moved to the scenes at the fort, it was a creepy, no holds barred ride. The fort itself, which takes on a life of its own is such a gorgeous location. With the starkness of the bare forest around it, and the twists and turns of its underground tunnels, one never truly knows what’s around the next corner or buried underneath the carpet of leaves. It holds many secrets, some of which you see, while others are left to your imagination.
The standout performance was delivered by Steven Waddington (who I remembered immediately as Major Duncan Heyward in The Last of the Mohicans) who is brilliant as a tortured man who suffers from what can only be described as multiple personality disorder. His performance was worth any disappointment I may have felt in other parts of the film.
Would I recommend this movie – absolutely, but I caution you against expecting too much. The film is slow to start and at first, you may think that it’s never going to get to the good stuff, but trust me, it does get there. Eventually.
DarkMedia contributor Julianne Snow was first lulled into the horror genre by her parents during an ill-advised viewing of Alien when she was only 4 years old. Since that date, it’s been a given that Julianne will watch and read anything that is horror related. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies from Sirens Call Publications and Open Casket Press, as well as The Sirens Call and various other websites showcasing short fiction. She is the author of the Days with the Undead series, which can be found on her website dayswiththeundead.com. Her first novel, Days with the Undead: Book One was published in early 2012 and is based on her popular web serial. Find her on Twitter @CdnZmbiRytr.
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