Hunters

Hunters offers up a clumsy start, to a series that, so far, fails to inspire.

The show taps into the shadow government organization hunting aliens stick. Its hardly original but that's OK. What's not OK is the poorly constructed storyline and characterizations.

Its story never really makes clear whats happening or why. You get vague pieces of information, combined with showy scenes of amongst other things, the done to death, alien autopsy. Perhaps this is intended to intrigue the viewer? The reality is, it simply confuses.

The characterizations are hardly impressive either. They feel flat and lifeless. There's no strong emotion, clarity of purpose or real connection built between the key characters. This includes those who are romantically involved. As a consequence the key players are, for the most part, rendered uninteresting and dismissable.

For myself, there is little to like here. I was genuinely bored by the first episode and doubt, I'll be taking this one any further. Three out of ten from me.

OK I am Australian and I watched 5 mins of this and knew right off it was made in Australia with a full Australian cast but one.

For some reason it might be the lack of syfi series made in Australia, Australian directors and actors like to treat all work as Art house drama. We just don't do suspense well. So saying that, this makes the first ep very disjointed. Like other reviewers, you do not feel a connection to the characters. This I blame the director. The acting is fine if you can get over the bad American accents. Flynn the main is pretty good with his dialect, the others need a lot of work. But the whole ep is all over the place. As viewers we want to love the main guy we want to have empathy for him weather it be a syfi or crime show. Sadly if the directing does not pull together suspense and let the characters develop I see this not picking up a second series.

In order to mix mystery and action, the show chooses a more militaristic approach to the usual premise. It doesn't provide much in terms of characters, although there might be slight potential here. For action itself, the camera is unsteady and the dark tone of cinematography doesn't help much. There's not much here that bring hook and creativity beyond the casual draw.

Flynn (Nathan Phillips) is an agent with difficult situation, wife missing and awkward step-daughter. The strange relationship with his wife's daughter can be appealing in mildly dysfunctional kind of way, but the acting doesn't create any spark. Flynn himself is the typical agent, while this secret organization lacks any appealing identity.

The pilot misses its chance for impressive introduction, something similar to MiB first initiation that really sets the tone. While it may be done to keep the mysticism, a series with organization at the core needs to establish itself well, yet Flynn is merely unceremoniously thrown in. The antagonist creature has a good design to it, the make-up does present something humanoid.

Graphic is occasionally too dark, which can be distracting. It tries to bring more authentic military look and the shaky visual might diminish the effort. The narrative doesn't pique much interest either, it might utilize the thriller aspect, yet even this is rather questionable as none of the characters can effectively draw audience to emotionally invest in the series.

"Hunters" manages to cover the basic sci-fi, but there's little drive to push the series further.

When something tries hard to emulate something else, but doesn't quite make it, it enters an area of psychology referred to as the "uncanny valley"; for example, a mannequin that is almost real, but not quite. When a person encounters something that takes them into the uncanny valley, it sets off an anxiety and makes them uncomfortable. This is why we don't make dummies that look too human-like, they put shoppers off.

"Hunters" lives firmly inside the uncanny valley. Virtually all of the actors are Australian. It's filmed in one of the most Australian of cities, Melbourne, inside Melbourne buildings and houses. They really try their best to put on American accents but outside of the veterans they often fail -- sometimes quite comically. Australia is not North America. Escalators are reversed. Vehicles have the steering wheels on the wrong side. The architecture is distinctly un-American. The list goes on.

It's a recipe for a perfect storm of distractions, and when the show itself is quite borderline in terms of plot, acting and editing the last thing you need is to then shove viewers out of what meager frame you have by shouting at them that this is "fake". At the very least the lead actors ought to have been North American. Maybe they could have anchored the rest of it but with all Aussies it's all at sea.

This show started off with action from the first episode. I don't know why people seem so disturb by this. Many movies have started this way, then go back and fill in the details. So yeah, I may not have understood everything that was going on but it was intriguing enough to keep me watching to want to know more. And I didn't feel lost or confused. I think it is a very interesting storyline which they are developing at a decent pace. Now that we are a couple of episodes in the storyline and relationships are developing nicely. For me, it is a nice change from the "baby" and "corny" sci-fi that has taken over the last few years. Hope it continues...would love to see where this one goes.