'The Hunt' review:  Broad, bloody comedy with far-from-subtle humor

Last summer, a trailer for “The Hunt,” a horror-thriller about a group of left-leaning elitists who hunt Middle Americans like big game, drew such outrage that Universal Pictures postponed its release. Ah, remember those relatively carefree days, when the war between “coastal elites” and “deplorables” felt like a matter of life and death? Now, staring into the face of a global pandemic caused by coronavirus, we clearly have bigger problems. Could the time be right for a bloody farce that bludgeons both sides of the political divide?

You’ll need a strong stomach and a taste for unsubtle humor to enjoy “The Hunt." In the opening scene several snobs enjoying caviar on a private jet are interrupted by a burly dude in a flannel shirt. “One of them’s awake!” someone yells, setting off a flurry of gore and splatter. So much for a slow, artful build-up.

Nevertheless, director Craig Zobel (“Compliance”) and writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse keep us off-balance by playing with our expectations of who will and won’t survive. The twelve “hunted” characters wake up in a meadow, remove the rubber gags locked to their mouths and begin to reveal their personalities, though few of them last long. One of the first we meet is a fast-thinking Staten Islander (Ike Barinholtz) who knows exactly what’s going on. “Manorgate,” he says sagely, a reference to a conspiracy theory that is now irrefutably true.

It’s no spoiler to say our central heroine is Crystal, a no-nonsense vet with a tour of Afghanistan under her belt. Played by a terrific Betty Gi;pin (of Netflix’s “GLOW”), Crystal has eyes that gleam with animal alertness (or, perhaps, insanity). She’s a stone killer and a total hoot — exactly who you’d buddy up with should this situation ever befall you.

The movie’s political strikes are not exactly surgical – more like carpet-bombing. The hunters (a somewhat faceless group played by Teri Wyble, Vince Pisani and others) tiptoe around gender pronouns and racial nomenclature, but don’t extend the same courtesy to the “hicks” they blast to smithereens. There’s a discussion about the optics of hunting black people but the liberals, and surely the filmmakers, decide not to go there. The hunted folks take fewer lumps, though one spouts casual anti-Semitism and another babbles about “crisis actors.”

It’s also no spoiler to say our main villain is Athena, a Champagne-sipping, Gruyère-spreading millionaire played by a smug Hilary Swank. She and Gilpin take over the film’s finale handily, trading verbal and physical blows to the strains of Beethoven.

“The Hunt” may not strike all viewers as hilarious, but it certainly isn’t a one-sided hate-fest. It’s just bloody entertainment with a thick slab of socio-political humor. Now you can finally see it — that is, if you’re willing to venture into a theater.