Night of the Hunted

Night of the Hunted

Director ~ Franck Khalfoun

Writers ~ Rubén Ávila Calvo, Glen Freyer, Franck Khalfoun

2023, USA-France

Stars ~ Camile Rowe, Jeremy Scippio

But Franck Khalfoun’s ‘Night of the Hunted’ proves problematic: as soon our adulteress protagonist says that her only problem is men telling her what her problem is, we know that she’s going to be all Final Girl. However, what the film then proceeds to do is to pin her down under threat of death so that one guy can mansplain endlessly over a walky-talky at her.

She captured in a gas station at night by a sniper that has deliberately left the walky-talky there so that he can vomit all his grievances at his victim. That the film doesn’t easily let Camille Rowe’s (she’s good) character give herself away is surely admirable – even keeping the audience at arm’s length because, yeah, why should she be answerable to anyone? – but then it sadistically makes her explain herself under duress with Both Siderism. This serial killer wants her to “confess” she’s just as bad as him because she works as in publicity for a pharmaceutical company. Yes, it’s a conspiracy theorist’s rifle-aided rant-a-thon – he objects to that term, but the conspiracy is surely that the whole world is against him.

There’s a lot to enjoy in the under-siege situation, and Khalfoun knows how to direct and keep all the balls up in the air, and which just about keeps interest once you realise it’s giving just as much time to a crazed mass murderer who thinks his Right Wing and Misogynist agenda means some kind of justification (however articulate, it’s there). There’s just the sense that the film thinks that she is somehow, in some way, deserving. And that’s easily dismissible. There’s just something not to trust.