The horror-thriller starring Betty Gilpin was famously shelved following tweets by the POTUS.
That’s an interesting take given the controversy the film inspired last year.
“There is a way that everyone would have talked about it had it been released as originally planned.
Credit: Universal Pictures
And now, in my humble opinion, this thing is being treated like its radioactive.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What inspired you and Nick Cuse to writeThe Huntin the first place?
DAMON LINDELOF:It was beforeThe Leftoversending and before we started working onWatchmen.
Patti Perret/Universal
Then we started throwing ideas at one another to see how ridiculous it could be.
What if it was hunting human beings for sport?”
Obviously thats the brass ring, because it also got Oscar consideration and all these things.
Universal Pictures
Then we were off to the races.
The film’s release was initially paused because of two mass shootings.
And in this case it was absolutely and totally essential.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
How do you think he got the wrong end of the stick?
Oh, I dont know I would make the horrific mistake of correcting him about anything.
I would ask, “Do you want to see the movie?”
Because the President was responding to reporting that was responding to someone that had read the script.
It was just a vicious game of telephone that got way out of control.
The movie shows the political extremes of the left and the right as being bad, essentially.
Theres no safety in the extremes.
This isnt to say that everybody needs to move to the center.
There is space for passions in terms of ones political ideology.
But when you stop believing common sense, thats when things get quite ridiculous.
Betty Gilpin issogood as the movie’s laconic, skilled-in-the-ways-of-mayhem heroine.
Shes likeDirty Harry-era Clint Eastwood.
She carries the movie on her shoulder.
Her timing is just brilliant.
I thought the film was perfectly cast.
I would watch an entire movie about those two characters.
This is a long way from that, but it was great to see them both in the film.
He knew Macon fromGreen Room.
And I think one of those primary anxieties is, “Am I an American?”
Or “Why are these other people saying Im un-American?”
“What does this idea of divisiveness really mean in its most horrific kind of extreme version?”
And so horror allows us to ask those questions, and to show people the manifestation of their nightmares.
and then they get to walk out of the theater and…
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This article has been edited for length and clarity.
