Update: Universal canceled The Hunt‘s release.
Original: This week I watched a trailer for an upcoming movie called The Hunt by Universal Pictures that will be released into theaters on September 27.
Watch the trailer below (Warning: It contains graphic violence):
The movie is from Jason Blum, who produced The Purge series, and Damon Lindelof, co-creator of the TV series The Leftovers and Lost.
The movie stars Betty Gilpin (GLOW), Justin Hartley (This Is Us), Emma Roberts (American Horror Story), and Oscar Award Winner Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, Freedom Writers, Million Dollar Baby).
The premise of the movie is that a group of liberal elitists who kidnap everyday people that The Hollywood Reporter says are MAGA-type people that the hunters call “
The R-rated political satire was originally titled Red State Vs. Blue State.
Kim Masters and Tatiana Siegel for The Hollywood Reporter write:
The script for The Hunt features the red-state characters wearing trucker hats and cowboy shirts, with one bragging about owning seven guns because it’s his constitutional right. The blue-state characters — some equally adept with firearms — explain that they picked their targets because they expressed anti-choice positions or used the N-word on Twitter. “War is war,” says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly.
It does not appear that the “MAGA” folks are portrayed in a particular good light, but on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine the people kidnapping and stalking people are not the bad guys.
So I’m not concerned about that per se.
I’m concerned about a movie like this being released where political tensions are high with vitriol being spewed by both sides.
The Pew Research Center in July released a survey where 78 percent of people polled said that the “heated or aggressive” language in debate makes violence more likely and majorities of Republicans (61 percent) and Democrats (83 percent) believe this.
They also asked, “Do you ever think: we’d be better off as a country if large numbers of [Opposing Party) in the public today just died?”
Twenty percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans agreed.
Then 18 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans believe violence would be justified if the opposing party won the election in 2020.
This is a problem and movies like The Hunt don’t help. In light of everything that is going on in our culture, growing incivility in our political discourse, and growing acceptance of political violence this movie is the last thing we need.
