Night of the Hunted

I like movies which takes place at an isolated gas station situated in the middle of nowhere.

I thoroughly enjoyed Open 24 Hours (2018).

This movie enticed me via the settings of a gas station but found it to be a disappointment.

Nothing original bah this unnecessary lengthy movie. The editing is so atrocious that the movie gets very repetitive n boring.

The villain doesn't sound intimidating or terrifying n there is absolutely no character study or background story.

This movie is lifted from so many other thrillers. Some of them r mentioned below.

Carnage Park (a psychotic sniper terrorizes a bank robber and his hostage). Carnage Park is boring n had lots of flickering lights n hand held shaky cam stuff.

Roadside (A couple fight for their lives when they are held hostage in their car by a concealed gunman at the side of a desolate road). Haven't seen Roadside but very bad reviews on IMDb.

Phonebooth (A publicist finds his life under threat when he answers a ringing phone at a phone booth. The caller tells him that he will be shot the minute he cuts the call).

Phonebooth is one of the best thriller n everything has already been said bah this movie.

Downrange (A group of friends are killed one by one by a ruthless sniper after they get stuck in the middle of nowhere).

Downrange is violent, brutal n tension filled. It's from the director of Midnight Meat Train.

And the recent To Catch a Killer (A cop is recruited by the FBI to help profile and track down a sniper).

This one has top notch acting n it is a thriller. This has more to do with catching the sniper.

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.

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.

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?

I have to be honest, this was not my favorite... there was just a lot of things that didn't work for me.

It felt like this movie was three hours long with very slow pacing and was quite repetitive in nature. The acting also generally didn't help, it wasn't the best on anyone's part and there wasn't a likable or redeemable character to enjoy. Also the amount of suspension of disbelieve required to navigate your way through this plot is hearty. But what really got me about this movie was the message/point.

It got to be extremely preachy, talking about all of these modern day issues... like, ALL of them. It felt like it was taking itself very seriously and thought that they were being very clever and woke while simultaneously not really saying or doing anything of substance. It touched on 101 different topics and issues, but none of them felt like the main premise. It also then left us completely and utterly unfulfilled in the end.

All of this added up begs the question, what was the point? I hate saying this about movies but it felt like a bit of a waste of time. It wasn't total trash but I would not recommend.