Battleground and Sixty Minutes To Midnight director Neil Mackay’s latest turn at the survival genre brings us the otherwise aptly titled Death Hunt. The story is set in the rural Midwest in 1998, where Ray (Omar Tucci), a wealthy land developer, is looking to shake things up, much to the chagrin of the reluctant farming locals.
Not to be overlooked here is the fact that he’s a happily married man while on the road with his mistress, Brooke (Marlene Malcolm), who couldn’t be happier on their escapade. Thinks take a dark turn when they’re pulled over by a shady cop named Gary (Greg Johnston) and two unsavory motorists Rick (Rick Amsbury) and TJ (Terry McDonald), and taken against their will into a remote forest away from civilization. In just a matter of hours, their intentions are made vividly clear as Ray and Brooke are forced to run for their lives from a trio of armed men who hunt other people for sport.
Obviously not to be confused with Peter Hunt’s 1981 Lee Marvin/Charles Bronson starrer of the same name – but you take your pick – if the throwback 80s tone of action was what Mackay was going for, he definitely accomplishes this to a small degree. Character development runs a bit longer for the role of TJ which is more than what we can say for our heroine in Brooke who, despite coming off at times as a helpless damsel, shows herself to be anything but.
There are certainly some areas where the writing lags and doesn’t really do any justice for our protagonists, on top of the lack of any real development beyond their will to survive. What you do get are some solid performances by the cast and a tightly-woven pacing to help hold the movie up for its duration, as well as palatable lead in Malcolm who, for the most part, does well for herself.
As far as the relative subgenre of these types of “hunter-becomes-the-hunted” thrillers, Death Hunt isn’t anything you. It does feel like a good shaving-off of ten minutes or a re-write of a few scenes would have helped, and given the opening prologue, I could think of a better way this film could have been a more subversive thriller. At any rate, Death Hunt is nice, little, quaint, modestly gory low-budget thriller that seethes with intrigue at times, and make for a feasibly entertaining rental.
Death Hunt will arrive on DVD and Digital beginning July 12 from Uncork’d Entertainment.
