The Wild Hunt

Reviews Of Unusual Size!

Re: An intense session of LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) gets out of control when a man breaks the veil of fantasy in an attempt to win back his girlfriend.

Outstanding: Some very strong performances here. Great sets and physical effects. Despite the dark tone of the film, there are some moments of humor. I love the poster.

Unacceptable: Some actors were a little questionable, but thanks to the blurring of reality and LARP life, that never impacted the emotion of the movie. Some reviewers claim that the world of LARPing is inaccurately portrayed. The music could be overbearing at times. I have no idea how Erik managed to speak in his angry viking voice the entire movie without losing his voice.

Summary: This was a very bleak film. I figured it would go down the path it took, but I was surprised at how cohesive the entire movie felt as a whole. There are some excellent performances, especially from the two brothers and the referee, who deserves more praise for her part. This is not a pleasant movie - it's almost Coen Brothers-esque and you wont leave it with a good feeling, but it is worth watching. An interesting take on the potential violence within us.

4/5

Larpers (more properly L.A.R.P.ers, i.e. Live-Action Role Players, i.e. folks that dress up like goblins and wizards and engage in foam-sword combat in the woods) have been one side of a cinematic love affair, of late. Documentaries like Darkon and Monster Camp try and peel back the fake fur and face paint to see the real people beneath, while comedies like Role Models see in the admittedly nerdy hobby a wellspring of both laughs and weirdly noble self-realization.

In director Alexandre Franchi's debut film The Wild Hunt, larping is something altogether more serious, and much more sinister. Erik Magnusson (Ricky Mabe), a Canadian born to an Icelandic father whom he now reluctantly cares for, is bothered by repeated dreams of a banging door and the sound of his girlfriend Evelyn (Tiio Horn) crying out in fear. Evelyn has left him for the weekend, to role play a princess in Erik's older brother Bjorn's larp-group, a viking and troll setting Bjorn (Mark A. Krupa) has all but disappeared into. To win her back, Erik must navigate the confusing, threatening larp world, where he discovers that some of the players aren't just escaping workaday responsibilities but are instead building a framework to work out some of their darker, more violent fantasies.

It's an enjoyable film, troubled by a difficult script. On the one hand it's enjoyably novel: setting a murder-and-revenge story amongst the assumedly meek, awkward foam-sword and teva-sandals crowd is an entertaining twist, and Franchi, helped enormously by good Gothic set dec and often beautiful cinematography by Claudine Sauvé is able to wring surprisingly high drama out of the whole thing. On the other hand, in building up to the grand guignol finale the film strains and struggles, testing credulity both in terms of character motivation and in terms of basic emotional mathematics: it's hard at points to understand why Erik doesn't just dismiss the whole mess and go home. That said, there's rather more of the former dark beauty than the latter character weirdness, and the film (especially as a Canadian film artifact) is massively enjoyable on its merits, of which there are plenty. Missteps along a very original path are easily excused. 8/10

This is very much a low budget indie film. When I saw it in 2010, I was actually floored by how good of a movie it was for a very limited release indie film. My only complaint about the movie is really style and characters being a little too unbelievable, but only the unbelievability because the movie starts off trying to establish realism vs fantasy but seems to lose realism in later forms of the movie.

This movie is essentially a retelling of a Shakespeare tragedy involving the LARP scene community. The build up could have truly been a lot better but the later half of the movie is very well done in terms of the Shakespearean tragedy. I cannot say much because this movie is a need-to-watch basis to see it although it is difficult to get your hands on.

If you ever do find this movie, I would recommend watching it with a group of friends. It is a dark and emotional movie that is a good watch for the first time.

this film is out of whack, but that is where it is supposed to be.

you have a real viking, rescuing a fake princess from a fake celt, and throughout, all become something they really didn't want to be when the game started.

they are nerds playing at fantasy violence without realizing that their modern skins mask a real violence hidden in their real history, and it just waiting for the right catalyst to prompt its release.

and then there is the ending. it is a mixture and manifestation of both fantasy and reality.

and that is the truth that surrounds us all. we all live in a mix of fiction and the other. and it is up to us which wins out and when.

when we give ourselves up to the impetus of a group, we also relinquish individual immunity from the crimes of that group--just ask albert speer.

I wasn't sure what to expect when i started this film. I really wnjoyed the fact that it combined several genres without coming off as farce. Incredible dialog, great acting, perfect production.