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There's a lot to admire about The Hunt, foremost of which is probably Mads Mikkelson's performance as the protagonist Lucas. The cast is all-around strong, enlivening characters who don't necessarily have all that many hidden depths from the script itself, and the direction is always at least competent and at best very good.

But despite that I just can't love this movie somehow. I've rated it a 7 because it would sort of seem insulting to the actors otherwise, but it really hovers around a 6.5 in my mind. Maybe I'm bringing some baggage to the movie myself since I'm already familiar with historic child molestation social panics, such as the rash of satanic ritual abuse accusations in the 1980s, and I have a rough idea of how something like this might get started. I certainly think this is an important topic to make a film about, and it does throw some interesting light on the way adult relationships are affected by children in various ways (specifically in small Danish rural communities, I suppose, but I'd say the themes are pretty universal).

But once The Hunt got going, there was almost nothing in it which took me remotely by surprise. After the main action begins, assuming you have read a one-sentence synopsis of the film, you can pretty much always guess what will happen at any time by asking yourself "what is the worst decision Lucas could make right now which is nonetheless fairly reasonable from his point of view?" More generally, you might ask "what plausible outcome from this scene would be the worst for Lucas's case or position?" Just like water flowing downhill, you can pretty much foretell where the entire film is going to go from the beginning right out until way in the end of the fourth act.

Now, I don't need every movie I like to be some kind of sui generis bolt from the blue that makes me see cinema in a whole new light. But I do like the occasional curveball every now and then. The Hunt, for all of its good qualities, just seemed pre-ordained to run along tracks I could already see. It's worth watching if you're a fan of Mikkelson's or haven't thought about the issues involved very closely, but otherwise there's probably a much more interesting movie about this out there somewhere.

Keith Li is still not a familiar name to many except gore hounds specializing in SE Asian horror, but those in the know will agree that he reached his pinnacle with this disturbing, uncompromising gem of cinema; his only extant subsequent films seem pale and incomplete when compared to the bleak vision of Centipede Sorcerer.

Other commenters here have already noted many of the unforgettable features of this film: Darma Yang's startling cinematography, the strong religious and existential subtext, and of course the sheer barking madness of what actually occurs during the film. To this I'll only add that Li displays an absolute mastery of tone here; apart from a slow section in the first part of the movie, it stays extremely, horribly consistent throughout, with a mood that builds like the slow realization of some terrible idea from a suspicion to full-blown awareness.

As another poster noted, seeing this will be a real shocker for fans of Din Long Lee. It's truly a one-of-a-kind performance, but I can't help but think that the very fact that she was involved in a production like Centipede Sorcerer had something to do with her career never really taking off with more mainstream audiences.

It's a testament to Li's weird genius that he ends his film with a tip of the cap to Truffaut's 400 Blows. Days after I've seen it, the haunting final score still lingers in my memory. This is certainly not a movie I can recommend to everyone, but it left an indelible mark on me for sure.

I didn't have high expectations going into this movie, having seen more than my fair share of awful direct-to-video horror films, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised by Lockout. It's clearly a low-budget movie, but the director and actors prove to be fairly adept at working within those parameters and still coming out with an intriguing, competent little film. In that way and several others it reminded me of the little-seen German serial-killer movie Schramm (1993).

There were some flaws here that prevented Lockout from falling into that "great but unknown" category. While the acting is far above par for this kind of movie, a few scenes did fall a little flat. The pacing could be a little tighter overall. And at the end of the movie there's a sort of big reveal which isn't particularly compelling (or unexpected, by the time it happens).

Overall the dialog is much better than I would have expected, though, from the naturalistic-sounding phone call in the first scene to rest of the character's conversations. The focus of the movie tends to be on the characters and their emotional state, rather than the larger plot, and as such it tends more towards evoking unsettled moods over outright shocks and scares, which is fine with me. It also has a few thematic subtexts that are more complex, and better executed, than is common in the genre, although some of these seem a bit muddled up by the end of the film.

I'm not much of a gore-hound myself, but there is one fairly graphic gore scene. I think the director was wise to concentrate his effects budget in a few places instead of just hurling red paint everywhere, but the level of violence is probably not enough for voracious gore-hounds and a little extreme for the more typical horror fan.

Overall this one is definitely worth a look, especially if you are a fan of more cerebral, low-key horror. It's certainly much better than the 3.2 rating it's currently hovering at.