

He later worked in IT and computer sciences.

He started his career in the policeforce before joining the military. Rob spends much of his time compiling social media content for like-minded sports afficienados.Īlso known as ‘Titch’, Swindon-born Mervyn is Hunted’s oldest ever contestant. Rob and Benįriends Rob and Ben, in their mid-20s, are huge football fans. They work as a charity researcher and an financial consultant. The couple, 22 and 23 respectively, have been together for eight years. See more How are the contestants this year? Ella and Jess Their first task will be to identify the unknown city they’ve been let loose in and escape the detection of a helicopter circling overhead. This year, for the very first time, the fugitives will be stripped of all of their personal belongings and will have no money – just the clothes they are wearing at the time – forcing them to rely on the kindness of strangers and exploiting their own networks in order to stay hidden. Once they reach the 25-day landmark, the contestants have to head to an “extraction point” in order to receive their share of the prize. If just one person manages the feat, they will claim the entire £100,000 to themselves. So, for example, if all 10 resist capture for 25 days, then they each win £10,000.

“Hunted” gets caught in the middle.The aim of the game is to successfully escape the hunters for 25 days.Ī total cash pot of £100,000 is equally shared between any contestants who manage to stay hidden in this time. There’s a better version of “Hunted” that either leans more into its surreal flights of fancy or settles into gritty, tense realism. And Debay is solid throughout, selling the believability of Eve’s nightmare in a way that the rest of the film often fights against. “Hunted” kind of comes together in its final scenes as it unleashes Eve on her tormentor, providing that catharsis this genre typically reaches. And even its clever twists, like with the opening story and the Red Riding Hood allusions, start to feel like window dressing for a shallow piece of filmmaking. "Hunted" may look better than a lot of “hunting horror” movies-a genre often typified by cheap filmmaking since it doesn’t require much more than a cast, camera, and nearby woods-but it’s ultimately no smarter. It creates a disconnect in the storytelling that pervades the whole piece, keeping it from finding a consistent tone. She’s going for gritty survivalism-everyone else is doing a bad riff on Quentin Tarantino or Eli Roth.
#Hunted 2020 movie#
Worthalter gives an unhinged, broad performance, which is fine, but it sometimes feels like it’s from a different movie than the one that Debay is in. Paronnaud seems enraptured by his sociopath as he watches recordings of his previous crimes and pokes his finger in the bloody wound of his partner in awfulness. The bulk of “Hunted” consists of the increasingly terrified Eve trying to evade being captured again, but Paronnaud spends a truly unusual amount of time with his villains instead of his hero. Eve is being kidnapped, and she’s in for the worst night of her life.Īfter a truly surreal car accident involving a kiss and a wild boar, Eve finds herself freed from her captors and fleeing through the woods. An accomplice (Ciaran O’Brien) gets in the front seat and begins driving. A man ( Arieh Worthalter) rushes her to rescue and the two hit it off. She decides to blow off steam by going to a bar, where she’s hit on by a true asshole within minutes. The work isn’t going well, and neither is a relationship. The red outfit worn by the heroine here is not accidental, and there are wolves of both the animal and human nature.Įve ( Lucie Debay), the only character in “Hunted” with a name, is working on a construction project in an unnamed country, but she seems like an outsider in early scenes. Paronnaud and co-writer Léa Pernollet attempt to elevate their narrative by framing it all in the context of mythology and fables.

That early line is key to understanding the approach to survival horror taken here by director Vincent Paronnaud, in a much different gear than his Oscar-nominated co-directorial work on “ Persepolis.” With echoes of vengeance films like “Revenge” or “I Spit on Your Grave,” “Hunted” is the relatively simple story of a woman forced to fight for her life after being kidnapped by a couple of sociopaths. Highlights include " Blood Quantum," "Z," and "Anything for Jackson." I can’t wait to see what they do in 2021, but “Hunted” is a misstep. One of the best streaming services in the world, Shudder endeavors to elevate genre films that might otherwise get lost in the increasingly large shuffle of never-ending content. “The company of wolves is better than that of men.” So says a woman to her son in the effective prologue to “Hunted,” the latest original horror film to land on Shudder today.
