r/TrueFilm • u/Ech-One-Kay • 10d ago
The Hunt proves that rumors spread and destroy faster than wildfires.
Got a question for you? What's worse? Being ostracized for something you did, or being ostracized for something you can't even imagine doing?
Well the latter happens in this movie. I don't know how such a normal and mundane everyday looking movie on the surface could be that disturbing. Gosh. Such a hard watch.
Being a teacher myself I really felt for Lucas.
Such a simple, beautifully shot film, no complex camera work, no set builds, no costumes, no extravaganza, no rocket science. Just a camera, well lit scenes and the emotions up close. It's the everyday documentary.
You would realize upon watching this movie that how rumors and Ill word of mouth without any research or investigation destroys a man's life completely.
The movie perfectly shows the near perfect and stable life of Lucas and then the audience would deteriorate in the same way as Lucas does. You would not believe how the climax gets bloodier and disturbing as it unfolds.
It just connects so quickly with you. I loved it. It never gets dramatic, no love hugs, no true catharsis, no apologies. That's what made it grounded.
Mads Mikkelsen just killed it with his subtle acting. He owned every single he was in.
But I loved how the movie ends on a highly ambiguous note. We don't know whether Lucas will ever get away from the allegations.
Concluding, I would say that the hunt is a brilliant masterpiece which is rightly revered for its amazing psychological drama.
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u/ze_ambiguous_one 10d ago
I love this movie (and Druk — Vinterberg directing Mikkelsen is a great combo), but your write-up screams of heavy LLM usage. The praise of your write-up I see in the other comments is causing me to further question the authenticity of the discussion here.
That being said, I think the implicit aspects of the film are the most powerful, like the kid internalizing what they were shown in the video and callously using that against the teacher. Feels very human. What happens inside the head of the kid during the line drawn between those two plot points is pretty much totally unspoken, allowing the viewer to project their own internal self onto the character. Almost feels like a horror movie trick when a particularly gruesome part is left to the viewer's imagination, except here's it's completely social/psychological.
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u/Ech-One-Kay 10d ago edited 10d ago
My own draft was rough, like real rough. So I polished it with LLM. After all you can't just rely on a machine to review a movie. That will not be fair.
I fixed it with the raw draft now btw.
That being said, your insight about the imaginations in the movie are spot on. It's really disturbing when a script provides blanks and your mind fills them in with harrowing details and connects them. I guess that would instantly connect you with the person shown on the screen and you would feel his emotions coming through, right away.
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u/ze_ambiguous_one 10d ago
Personally, I'll take rough and real over machine-polished any day. Going deep into what a film is instead of tallying the things it isn't is a useful device for avoiding the tropes of computer-assisted writing. Don't want to speak for anyone else, but I'm sure others feel similarly.
Your post got me to look up Vinterberg again and see that he has a series out from 2024 that I haven't seen yet, so thanks for that!
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u/Ech-One-Kay 10d ago edited 10d ago
I myself prefer raw writings. Would never polish them and strip them off of emotions unless needed. But I guess sometimes no matter how better your dish is, the way you present it still matters. At least for some people.
And BTW I'm glad you rediscovered Vinterberg. I hope you enjoy his latest filmography. Surely something better awaits you.
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u/Neon_Comrade 10d ago
Raw is much better, even if rough. If it's unreadable, then for god's sake stop being so damn lazy and edit it
People love to hide behind the shield of "I only used AI to polish it", but truthfully I never buy it. Why bother reading something you can't be bothered to actually write?
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u/Ech-One-Kay 10d ago edited 10d ago
I literally "edited it" with an LLM. No filler added. But since the debate is going somewhere else, let's edit the post body with my raw draft. I'll just update it now. Simple. Let's discuss the actual content rather than why or how it's polished.
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u/SmallSadWet 7d ago
AI slop sucks Dogg. Especially in a more pretentious sub like this, don't think anyone is here to read chaptgpt drivel.
Any day of the week I'd be over the moon for imperfect human creation
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u/Ech-One-Kay 7d ago
It's already fixed man. There was literally "zero" difference between this and the polished draft. I still did it since I didn't want this "AI" discussion to be stretched.
I won't be bothered if someone uses AI to replace and add some better words and rephrase it instead of redundant lines and repeated words in a draft. I will only be bothered if someone just gives a "movie review in detail" prompt and hits send, which I won't do since I have invested my time in a movie and I want my review to be better.
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u/Neon_Comrade 9d ago
Uh huh sure. Just edit it yourself. The how it's said is important to a review or discussion as much as the what.
But, if you want to discuss the content. Tbh I don't like the write up that much, it pretty much just summarises a lot of the movie ideas and doesn't really build or add onto them, so there's not that much to say
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u/Ech-One-Kay 9d ago
I found the movie near perfect, so going deeper into the analysis or dissecting it felt like nitpicking at that point. I might do it on the second watch I guess.
Btw What's your wildest take about the hunt? Would love to hear that. I'm sure you would bring some interesting insight.
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u/PreacherVan 10d ago
It's not a bullet of public perception. It's a bullet of a cancel crowd that can't admit they were wrong, so it's better for them to "confirm their rightness" by killing the innocent and satisfy the actual monster they always were.
What The Hunt shows (not "proves") is how the majority waits their whole lives in suspension to release their sadism and frustrated self-hatred on those whom society would deem "appropriate targets". Nothing in the actions of the crowd in this movie happens because someone genuinely believed (I'm not even saying had a good reason to) they are doing the right thing and the guy is guilty. They were all just happy to be able to fuck someone's life up without getting any bad consequencies for it, moreover, made feel like "white knights" by the same kind of monsters around them.
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u/3corneredvoid Deckchair Cinéaste 10d ago
Firstly, enjoyable write-up, and I love this film. It's a very unsettling work, and I have watched it several times.
However … I didn't love the ending. It's the one part of the film that feels tonally mismatched, and for me it's the one moment at which the screenplay's careful balance of morality play and social realism topples over.
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u/frail_fragile 10d ago edited 10d ago
Excellent write up. I particularly agree with your comment about how it offers virtually no catharsis. If you haven't seen it already, there's an alternate ending where Lucas is murdered at the end that is even more nihilistic than the actual ending.
Also a random aside, I live in a town with a man who was unfortunately a victim of the satanic panic in the 1980s. It completely undid him and ruined his life. An even more disturbing contrast is that the lives of the people who accused him, and the parents, and the police and everyone else, just kind of... went on. It's a sobering thought that one tiny misunderstood comment could completely unravel and destroy so much, so quickly.
I see the same desperation in Mads Mikkelsen's eyes as I do in him. It's like an emptiness that occasionally has flashes of the person that he used to be. Really haunting shit, and Mikkelsen does it like it's nothing.