Night of the Hunted

Again, another gas station movie. Again, another shooter movie. Again, at night. Again, nobody comes to the rescue. Again, same lame conversations. Again, the movie starts interesting but in 10 minutes everything starts to fell apart. Again, you know what is going to happen because you have watched this movie several other times. Again, this movie isn't realistic because people here act like robots. Again, the movie ends as many others. Honestly, I don't understand why independent movies are not risky anymore. This one is an example.

So, consequently you can skip this movie again, and follow with your life. Again. Happy Halloween.

This movie had amazing potential, but the severely saturated political BS and message passing was just too much.

A little political isn't bad but the writer went overboard from racial, vaccine, mask wearing, abortions, guns and religious bases touched. It was just as if the writer had gone crazy during Covid-19 shutdown and thought "how can I project me anger and frustration at the world"..and here we have the is projection.

The actual premise isn't unlike some other single shot location movies where the lead is trapped and 90% of the film is revolved around that place.

Splinter/Phonebooth/Night of the Living Dead.

The premise looked promising, but it quickly went downhill once the opening credits ended. When the film starts off with a woman texting her hubby about fertility clinics while her lover jumps in the shower, I'm struggling to understand how I'm supposed to root for her (not saying protags are saints, but at least build up to her flaws instead of smacking us upside the head). And speaking of smacking us, once the crazed sniper started ranting about every trendy social issue without taking a breath, I turned it off. I like scripts that are thought provoking, witty, deep, etc. This sounded written by a 20 year old undergrad at Berkeley who probably relies on his trust fund to pay for his "film aspirations." I could see this as a 30 minute episode (which is about as far as I got), otherwise it just drags and sucks my soul dry. Not to mention the plot holes and ridiculous suspension of disbelief required. I didn't care about any of the characters and certainly was in no mood to listen to a cheesy actor tick off every hot topic via walkie talkie. This was a wasted opportunity so I chose not to waste my time. Based on the reviews, I certainly didn't miss anything.

There must be at least a dozen or so horror/thriller movies in which most of the action occurs at remote gas stations or roadhouses. I'm always a sucker for them. This one follows the usual script more or less, and I can say that I did enjoy it even if it was fairly predictable. The one thing that many of them seem to have in common is that they fail to wrap things up neatly at the end, so I always feel a bit disappointed or cheated because of that. This movie is no exception in this unfortunately. If asked how I'd improve the movie I'd say that a few more characters trapped in the gas station would have permitted the writer to create more interesting dialog and the interaction between characters given the writer far more scope and diversity. As it is I feel it got a bit bogged down and drawn out for a fair amount of the time. Another suggestion would be to have a character enter the gas station with the aim of robbing it. Of course they'd be armed and be able to shoot back to some degree. But could the woman trust them?

What is it these days with making characters so unlikable, and so pathetically entitled, particularly in horror/thrillers where you are supposed to want them to survive!?

It fails in the basic task of creating a 'good' character you root for against a 'bad' character that you want to see fail and/or die.

The 'good' character here is actually written as a unpleasant, rude, obnoxious, man-hating woman who we discover is cheating on her supportive (apparently 'too nice') husband, who wants kids and thinks she's seeing a fertility doctor, with a co-worker who she appears to hold in equal contempt. She mentions on multiple occasions her disdain for men, and that is apparently her reason for not wanting kids, but lying to her husband that she does while cheating on him with another man - makes sense huh? She has no redeeming characteristics despite attempts to give her some redeeming situations, and at no point did I actually want her to survive.

Their idea for the 'bad' character was a feeling-hard-done-by right-wing anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who decides to kill innocent people and reinforce the stereotypes he apparently despises. It's almost comical how little effort was made, even if you find those kind of people ridiculous and dislikable. He isn't at all threatening or scary, just a childish idiot who got off Twitter and decided to kill people in a gas station in the middle of the night.

Some failed attempts are made to try to link the antagonist to the protagonist with her working for a pharmaceutical company and him hating "big pharma" companies and their employees, but it's all rather nonsensical.

Despite this, after switching off my brain, I weirdly found myself enjoying the overall premise of the film, and it could have been much better with more imaginative script-writers, but I don't think you'll find it particularly suspenseful or engaging so unless you can enjoy a film even when it's ridiculous you'll probably be more likely to dislike this as much as you do the characters within it.