This is frankly a shonky bit of exploitative nonsense that, in a way, recalls the classic horror films that feminist film theorist Carol J Clover wrote about so perceptively in her foundational tome Men, Women and Chainsaws. Such films – in this case, on an island where vile rich men espousing misogynist views hunt down and kill the women they’ve trafficked there – only to turn the tables in the last act when the “final girls” triumph so that female viewers might experience a cathartic thrill of vengeance.
That said, one gets the impression that the film-makers on Hunt Club, starting with screenwriters David Lipper (who has a supporting role here) and John Saunders, and director Elizabeth Blake-Thomas, aren’t taking any of this that seriously. The film seems to revel in the low-budget tackiness of it all, caking the underwear-clad extras in fake blood, and casting icons of schlock cinema (Mickey Rourke, Casper Van Dien) in key villainous roles.
Former Starship Trooper of yore, Van Dien plays the big boss here, a character called Carter who sports cowboy hats and western-style shirts with complicated details; he hopes to raise his son Jackson (Will Peltz) to be a real man like him who will despise cis women, trans people, and anyone gay or even remotely gay adjacent. In a roadside diner, they meet Cassandra (Mena Suvari, who seems to have barely aged a day since the late 1990s when she starred opposite Kevin Spacey in American Beauty), who has just had a fight with her girlfriend Tessa (Maya Stojan).
Lured by Carter’s promise that she can take home $100k if she wins the hunt, Cassandra goes with the father and son to the island, along with a younger woman called Lexi (Jessica Belkin) who answered an online ad placed by Conrad (Lipper) and Teddy (Jason London) in order to earn tuition money as an escort. See, girls? No good can come from wanting to get an education. Suvari gives her character’s displays of despair, fury and determination a bit of welly, especially when the time comes to fight Rourke, whose face looks more like a tenderised side of beef every year. Hopefully, casting agents may see this and offer Suvari a chance to do something more upmarket in the future.
• Hunt Club is released on 14 August on digital platforms
