Conservative movies just cannot catch a break. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. “The Hunt” came out on Friday the 13th—right as the coronavirus panic kicked into high gear. The theater was sparsely occupied.
“The Hunt” starts with a text between an unknown group of people, one of them insulting the president, followed by a call by the others to hunt down people who voted for him at The Manor. This is followed by a group of deplorables led by Betty Gilpin, who are drugged, kidnapped, and set down on a field, at which point liberal elites led by Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank begin hunting them down, one by one. At one point, one of the liberals notices that one of their victims was a married man. Ignore that, comes the reply. “The man was a monster.” And what made him a “monster”?
“He used the n-word, not just in private, but in public.”
Throughout the movie, the elites constantly refer to the blue-collar workers that they have corralled as if they were only slightly better than animals. The Second Amendment is brought up in an ironic exchange which I will not reveal so as not to spoil the scene. When together, the hunters constantly virtue signal with each other, correcting each other with the type of Newspeak that is commonplace in universities, in an unending exercise of one-upmanship. For example, one of them says, “Hey, guys,” only to be immediately reprimanded by the female for using a male plural term. Another time, one person refers to blacks and is corrected to use the term “African American.” This goes on nonstop anytime they are together. In this manner, the movie does not promote conservative values so much as ridicules the liberals when not showing their bloodthirstiness.
Posters for other movies usually cite accolades from journalist-critics. “The Hunt,” in contrast, quotes the previous denunciations of the movie by these critics, based on the previews: “The most talked about movie of the year is one that no one’s actually seen.”
Other movies that should have been patronized en masse by conservatives (but were not) were “Death of Stalin” (a white-knuckle comedy, all the more horrifying because the scenes were historically accurate), “The Interview” (a very good satire of North Korea’s dictator, though filled with gutter language), “Death Wish” (a remake of the original with a strong Second Amendment theme), and “An American Carol” (a scathing satire on liberals, particularly Michael Moore, using the Dickens tale as its basis).
It takes a monumental effort to make a movie in Hollywood with conservative values. All of the above lost money.
Indeed, the lack of support by the producer of “An American Carol” made him swear off from making any more movies with a conservative theme because of a lack of support from conservative audiences.
“The Hunt” is likely to join that group of neglected movies—but it doesn’t have to. Universal Pictures, which is distributing the film, will make “The Hunt” and a few other first-run films available for rental on various streaming platforms starting Friday.
Now, compare that to liberals’ response to movies that reinforce their ideology. Anytime that Hanoi Jane, Michael Moore, Rob Reiner, Oliver Stone, Jim Carrey, or Barbara Streisand make a movie bashing conservative values, liberals trample over each other in a mad stampede to see them, and thereby support future similar movies, not to mention gathering rave reviews.
Conservatives, on the other hand, just stay home and complain that conservative movies are not being made in Hollywood.
And, incidentally, they also say the same about books.