The Hunt

The kind of film I usually avoid, where a story based on an innocent lie thrives upon its characters' stupidity and makes me want to shake my fist furiously at the screen. This is more about the agonizing journey that Vinterberg takes Lucas on in clearing his name, a discouraging ordeal yet practical scaffolding for Mikkelsen's powerhouse performance.

What's scary about The Hunt is how depressingly plausible it all is. Nobody's really at fault for the inciting incident, but a few unfortunate coincidences snowball into an utter nightmare. It's a Hitchcock-ian wrong man scenario treated with psychological realism and clinical restraint, and it packs that much more of a punch for it.

As a generally Pretty Chill Dude Who Wants To Just Get Along With, Like, Everybody, I tend to get really uncomfortable when watching stories where innocents are going through hell because of actions out of their control. So yeah, this movie made me pretty damn uncomfortable. Events unfold in a pretty believable way, with shortsightedness and assumptions overwriting people's common sense, making this all the more frustrating. A very solid but not mindblowing drama.

A very intense movie that proves again that children are the devil

Excellent acting and directing aside, I think The Hunt is a courageous film. The idea that false accusations even exist has become almost taboo in the west, and some in the audience will therefore find the script unbelievable. I believed it, and I appreciated its restraint and sense of proportion actually. And to anyone admitting to themselves that this scenario is realistic in contemporary culture, it's a disturbing, harrowing, upsetting film.