Night Of The Hunted Review: Pulls A Lot, But Misses Cinemax
I have a confession to make. I often push my luck when it comes to refueling my car. Even if I pass several gas stations, I tend to wait until the gas light comes on before looking for a nearby gas station. However, this habit can be risky and unpleasant, especially when traveling in an area with few gas stations, in the middle of a traffic jam or alone at night. When I watched the beginning of the film “Night of the Hunted,” where a woman discovers she has to fill up at an empty gas station in the middle of the night, I was able to understand her situation.
But that’s just the film’s starting point, and it turns out not to be its absolute horror. When I read the plot description, which pointed me towards a horror thriller about a psychopath who threatens to shoot the poor woman inside the convenience store, I was expecting a movie that would leave me on edge. However, after an hour and a half, I’m still deciding whether the movie delivered on its promises, even if it’s not great. You are invited to read our review of “Night of the Hunted”.
What is Night of the Hunted (2023) about?
“The Night of the Hunted” is actually a remake of a little-known Spanish thriller called “The Night of the Rat” (“La noche del ratón”) from 2015. It is about a common trip to work that goes wrong. The film has no connection with the similarly named French paranoid thriller “Night of the Hunted”.
“Night of the Hunted” opens with a scene where we develop negative feelings towards the heroine. Alice (French actress-model Camille Rowe, who starred in the adorable “The Deep House” and is also known as one of Harry Styles’ exes) has a Skype conversation with her husband. During this meeting, we discover that she is also having an affair with a work colleague (Jeremy Scippio) and that she and her husband are undergoing fertility treatments. Alice and the colleague are driving in the middle of the night, but they have to refuel even though the colleague says he did it the day before.
Alice buys some things for the trip, prepares her coffee in the machine but discovers that there is no one to pay. A few seconds later, someone tries to shoot him. Later, he will also contact her via walkie-talkie – of course, since this is a horror thriller, it’s clear that a phone will go missing very quickly – and attempt to kill almost everyone who arrives at the gas station. We don’t see the shooter but we understand that he is hiding in a billboard overlooking the convenience store. Because there are many photos of this billboard, and billboards don’t talk to shoot people, if I remember correctly.
Here’s the trailer for “Night of the Hunted” 2023, so get in the mood:
Night Of The Hunted review: familiar premise, different execution
I’ve seen several films in this style, and some didn’t even star Liam Neeson. The principle is that, according to the best, I expect a film that will keep me in suspense, even if (and perhaps because) it takes place mainly in a single location: for example, Joel Schumacher’s excellent “Phone Booth” from 2003. In such films, I will fear for the fate of the heroine, I will discover exciting things about her or the reasons for the events that take place in the film, and I will also enjoy useless sequences where I almost get hurt, I save at the last minute, and so on.
“Night of the Hunted” doesn’t entirely lack these points, but they are few and far between. Rowe does a good job, but it’s hard to say that I felt much identification or sympathy for her because – let’s face it – her character is a bit boring. The supporting characters in the cast of “Night of the Hunted” (2023) are far from exciting or meaningful, with the exception of one character who manages to generate sympathy for her as a result of the story. The few revelations about the killer or his motivations in the film are relatively insignificant.
The film’s director is Franck Khalfoun, who broke out with the captivating “P2” in 2007. His first film is in some ways reminiscent of the current film, in that it is a survival film of a young girl (the superb Rachel Nichols) against a psychopath (the excellent Wes Bentley) who pursues her to an abandoned place in the dead of night, this time an underground parking lot and not a gas station. Even Khalfoun’s later films, like “Maniac” with Elijah Wood and even the disappointing “Amityville: The Awakening” with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bella Thorne, had some nice tense moments.
In “Night of the Hunted”, Khalfoun manages to convey quite accurately the feelings that accompany an abandoned gas station at night, thanks in part to the effective cinematography of Steeven Petitteville (“Terror on the Prairie”, which, contrary to its name, is a western about gangsters and not a horror film about lions), but does not always create feelings of claustrophobia, of racing against time or the feeling that at any moment you can be shot, as you should feel in films with a similar plot.
When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk
The main problem of “Night of the Hunted” begins when we discover that the mysterious guy who contacts the heroine via the walkie-talkie is none other than the assassin (Don’t shoot me! It’s pretty clear from the first second and also appears in the trailer, so it’s not too much of a spoiler). The truth is that in these moments the film loses all its momentum for the simple reason that the assassin is, to say the least, quite talkative. The main culprit is the script, which probably didn’t apply the famous quote from Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: “When it’s time to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk!”
Instead of using the conversations with the killer for potentially short sequences of tension, over the course of the conversations the guy mainly develops all kinds of issues that bother him in our world and sometimes in Alice as well. We hear his opinions on pharmaceutical companies, vaccines, politics, guns, fertility, sexual harassment in the age of Me Too, Covid-19, English football, recommended textile products for small kitchens, gourmet ice cream, keeping pigeons away, recommended eggplant preparation techniques, which actor will play the next James Bond, and more (well, some of these topics don’t appear in the movie, but you get the point).
My first feeling was that someone in production wanted to add these questions to the agenda and say something about them. At some point it becomes oppressive and repetitive, and these conversations detract from the ability to create adequate tension or horror. The film is problematic but misses something like the killer’s shots, which reveal a lack of uniformity: on one side, complex wounds that wouldn’t bother a sniper from an elite army unit. On the other hand, some shots miss the target in a way that seems to come from a failed soccer striker’s seasonal performance video.
As I thought about it in depth, I saw a potential direction that gave the film its own meaning. At one point, the sniper’s arguments reminded me of their structure and the depth of pointless retorts found on the Internet and social media on topics that commenters know little about. The sniper “shoots” these “messages” quite violently, completely anonymously, because we don’t know who he is and his main target is a woman who, probably not coincidentally, works in social media.
Later, when he walks out from the side of the advertising sign (which in its shape resembles a computer screen) and points in the direction of the store – again, this isn’t exactly a spoiler either – I think you can see this as a relatively rare case of the “talkback writer” leaving the screen to bring his ideas to fruition. I don’t know if this is what the creators meant, but if, in this way, it is possible to explain the choice of plot which quite detracts from the feeling of tension of the film, who am I to object? Especially considering the fact that the ending of “Night of the Hunted” is explained unsatisfactorily, as you can read in many online reviews of “Night of the Hunted.”
When the killer turns into a MacGuffin
Take, for example, the main question that can be asked in thrillers like this: who was the killer in “The Night of the Hunted”, that is, the identity of the killer?
The action of the film begins quite quickly, even within the first ten minutes. We know that the heroine is having an affair and working for a pharmaceutical company, and that’s about it. There are almost no events before arriving at the gas station and no exciting revelations afterward. In other words, even though the film tries to imply otherwise in some dialogue, there is no real tension regarding the identity of the killer because we understand that it doesn’t matter who he is. Although some horror films can work without a dominant evil or a face of terror, it’s hard to say that this risk works one hundred percent.
Just like in film noir where you’re looking for an element that’s not important to the plot – the term that came to mind is “MacGuffin”, which is associated with Hitchcock (although an English screenwriter named Angus MacPhail first used it) and describes a plot device that advances the plot and motivates the heroes, but is irrelevant to the story itself. The viewer does not care what this tool or object is, and its discovery is random. The MacGuffin isn’t a drawback, and with tight directing and scripting, you can use it to build tension or move the film forward in other ways. For example, no one cares that “The Maltese Falcon” is a sculpture, because this film noir masterpiece created tension and identification with the heroes in different ways.
In the case of “Night of the Hunt,” I would have preferred if we had about ten more minutes where potential suspects are added to the list, even a woman our Alice had an argument with on the road or something, so that we could perhaps think about who is behind the threats against the heroine and what exactly their motivations are. That is, beyond the fact that there are a lot of things in the world and what the main character stands for that bother him, or the analysis I offered regarding social media that I’m not sure could hold an entire movie.
Should you watch Night of the Hunted (2023)?
“Night of the Hunted” is, overall, a reasonable film. The general idea is interesting; there are some well-done sequences, and it manages to create suspense for certain parts. The lead actress’s performance is satisfactory, although there was plenty of room to create a more complex character, or one that appeals more to us as viewers.
I think the film hasn’t really decided its direction or what it wanted to say. The final result could therefore have been better. Anyway, if you’re looking for a thriller to pass an hour and a half with some chills in the middle of the night, “Night of the Hunted” may do the trick. It’s primarily intended for home viewing, given its small cinema distribution and minimal box office gross, but sometimes it’s good.
You’ll probably forget about “Night of the Hunted” (2023) a few hours after watching it, but it may remind you not to wait until your tank is almost empty the next time you’re driving.
You are welcome to read more of our horror reviews here.
