Night of the Hunted is streaming now globally on Shudder.
Synopsis
In the dead of night, a remote gas station turns into a battleground of wits and wills. Can one woman outsmart a hidden sniper with a secret vendetta?
Review
Time for something a little different. Halloween, aka Spooky Season, is a time for ghosts, slashers and – if you’re lucky – maybe alien abduction. But Shudder is never a streamer to back down from a fight and so, just in time for October 31st, comes Night of the Hunted. A gripping thriller from director Franck Khalfoun which is also a loose adaption of David R. Losada’s 2015 Spanish horror-thriller La Noche Del Ratón (Night of the Rat).
Alice (Camille Rowe) working in marketing and PR for a big Pharma company. She’s in a long-term relationship which is haunted by the potential for having a family. She’s also having an affair with John (Jeremy Scippio). Whilst driving back from a conference they stop for gas in the middle of the night and fall foul a sniper with a relentless grudge on society.
The setup and execution of Night of the Hunted are pretty straightforward. There’s no grand plan to upend the genre with shocking plot twists. Instead the focus is purely on the conflict between the naive Alice and her nihilistic enemy and the moral ambiguity that fills the gap in-between. Even the mounting victims that litter the often claustrophobic environment are secondary to the ultimate ethical and moral questions which are raised.
Much of the film works on a pseudo catch-and-release methodology. Once Alice enters the gas station she is backed in to a corner by a hail of bullets. One of which slices through her arm. From here Night of the Hunted becomes a series of vignettes each following a similar structure. Alice and her unseen assailant converse over walkie-talkie, an unsuspecting victim enters the scene and is dispatched. The cycle repeats again. A lesser film would buckle under the weight of repetition. But Khalfoun’s script, co-written with Glen Freyer, maintains buoyancy thanks to its thriving back-and-forth dialogue.
Putting the pieces together, Night of the Hunted has more going on than meets the eye. Alice isn’t in the wrong place at the wrong time. The sniper (Stasa Stanic) has chosen his victim specifically for her background. I don’t want to spoil too much of the content but suffice to say their differences are more than skin deep. Here the film strikes a frustrating balance between becoming truly insightful and oddly short sighted. Questions around the morality of Alice’s job strike at the heart of America’s opioid crisis. Could her work promoting drugs have lead to innumerable deaths? That question alone shifts the audience perspective on her innocence. But as the sniper reveals his own background it reads like a checklist of classic tropes. Conspiracy theorist. Check. War veteran. Check. Anti-vaxxer. Check. It’s perhaps the film’s most short sighted decision and misses the opportunity to present a more ambiguous protagonist.
Pitfalls aside there’s no denying that the ambiguity of Alice’s innocence is enough to shake the core of the audience. In the third act all the pieces come together to make the film a biting critique of gender stereotypes. It takes particular aim at the notion that women should prioritise family over ambition. The message becomes diluted by some of Alice’s actions as it purposely challenges her lack of maternal instincts.
There will be those who find the film’s ultimate conclusion frustrating. An ambiguity to Alice’s ending is taken directly from the original film, leaving the audience to interpret events in their own way. Likewise the ultimate identity of the killer is of little importance to the message which Night of the Hunted wants to leave us with. But whose side will you take? That is perhaps the ultimate question…
Verdict
Night of the Hunted is fraught, demanding thriller which pins its every success on Camille Rowe’s performance. Though it’s ultimately preoccupied with questions of morality there’s no denying the grip it holds over the audience.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
