Writer/director Shawn Linden cuts off the gristle and serves up the grisly with a savory slow-roasted tale of tension and terror with HUNTER HUNTER.
Joe Mersault, his wife Anne, and their 13-year old daughter Renee live a quasi-survivalist life in the Manitoba wilderness. Trapping and living off the food caught and furs traded, their small log cabin serves them well. With avid interest in her father’s methodologies and daily routine, Renee shows tendencies of wanting to shun all trappings of civilization and follow her father in actions and thoughts. On the other hand, going so far as to look at realty brochures in the general store, we see and feel angst building within Anne as food runs low and furs aren’t bringing enough value to buy staples. She is starting to crave a “normal” life, something that Joe not only resents, but refuses to consider even as driving the family to starvation and total ruin.
Thanks to Linden’s thoughtful and deliberate structure and design, while we can understand and appreciate Joe’s mindset, we are empathetic to Anne’s concerns as the roteness of following set paths, checking traps, being out in the wild with wolves and bears, and so far from other people or help should the need arise, takes hold with the unspoken fear of “what if”; what if someone gets injured in the woods, what if Renee takes ill, what if a wolf or bear attack more than the meat laden traps Joe has so carefully set out, what if they are trapped in the cabin with no food or water at all for an extended period. With each passing day, Anne’s fears become palpable.
As able-bodied and capable as Joe is, with the break of each dawn, one can’t help but wonder – will today be the day something happens. As cautious as he is in the wild, his fearlessness almost borders on arrogance and a sense of invincibility, something of which one is acutely aware when Renee is either with him or begging to join him. Luckily, common sense is still in the mix, particularly when Joe forces her to head home during one hunt when all signs point to a wolf being nearby, circling the traps Joe has throughout the forest. With their daily hunting routine disrupted and Joe barking new survival commands to his daughter, Renee finally understands the dangers of this life. But understanding and adjusting her behavior accordingly are two different things.
Tension ratchets up a few notches as we see Renee experiencing fear and the true dangers of following the life path of her father, while the lioness in Anne emerges as she and Renee face off against the wolf as Joe, believing he is attuned to the wolf and to nature, is off in another direction tracking far from them.
As day turns into night and night into day, days are passing without Joe’s return, sparking concern in Anne. Not only has he not returned, but he’s not responding on the walkie. As she seamlessly undertakes the daily tasks of checking traps and fishing lines trying to keep a normal routine for Renee (and have some sort of food), with Renee teaching her some basic survival skills like skinning a rabbit, Anne’s worry visibly increases, so much so that she goes to the local police seeking their help only to discover that the land her husband has claimed to generationally belong to him is federally owned, precluding local police from helping. But the police have their own worries with missing people, bears raiding the trash cans of folks in town, and an abandoned vehicle on the side of the ride that Officer Barthes can’t get out of his mind.
Just when Anne is at her lowest, hope arrives in the form of cries in the dark of night. Is it Joe? Unfortunately not. It’s an injured man who Anne brings into their home to tend his wounds sustained at the jaws of a bear. But just who is this man? And what is he doing out in this remote land? And where is Joe?
Slow burn is an understatement for HUNTER HUNTER. Writer/director Shawn Linden not only lets the story simmer, but does so with deliberate and methodically controlled observational heat as he takes us from Joe to Renee to Anne and back again, baiting us the way Joe baits his traps. By the time we see Joe stumbling into a horrifying site during his hunt, we are hooked; wide-eyed with terror at what will happen next. And with the introduction of the injured Lou, the tone and story is flipped on its head culminating in an unshakeable grisly crescendo.
Controlled and nuanced performances come courtesy of Camille Sullivan as Anne, Summer H. Howell as Renee, and Devon Sawa as Joe. Sullivan has the greatest arc and doesn’t disappoint as Anne comes into her own as a lioness guarding her cub while embracing inherent survivalist instincts. But then we have to look to Nick Stahl as Lou. Frightening, suspect, chilling. You feel an unease the minute Stahl appears on screen. Not to be overlooked are Gabriel Daniels and Lauren Cochrane as officers Barthes and Lucy.
Making his feature debut as cinematographer, Greg Nicod delivers a visual tone that embraces the harshness and beauty of a cold fall/winter in uncharted woods. Lighting is textured with a grey naturalness while his camera celebrates the nuance of tree bark, crystalline rushing waters, deciduous greenery, the unblinking stare of a wolf, while framing is quiet and still yet interesting. It fuels the diversion-less loneliness of the Mersault family. There is a cold clinical feel that speaks to life for the Mersaults being about minimalist survival as opposed to “living”.
Piggybacking on Nicod’s work is that of Linden’s sound team led by sound editor Xerxes Shuzhang Yang and mixer Eric Neufeld. Sound design and mix is spectacular. It is so well done that you can close your eyes and just listen to the soundscape and you will feel the location and the disruption in nature by man. The delicacy with which the sound is fine tuned is exquisite. We are in tune with the sounds of nature, the crack of a brittle leaf or break of a branch, punctuated with the distant howl of a wolf or the weight of a makeshift metal “sled” hauling supplies…or a man.
Completing the picture is Kevon Cronin’s sparse and haunting score.
But through it all, there is a sensitivity and empathy to both man and nature; a sensitivity and empathy that are ultimately questioned in the most shocking and heinous manner possible.
Written and Directed by Shawn Linden
Cast: Camille Sullivan, Summer H. Howell, Devon Sawa, Nick Stahl, Gabriel Daniels, Lauren Cochrane
by debbie elias, 12/10/2020
