The Wild Hunt

I had the chance to see The Wild Hunt at TIFF in 2009. It was no surprise to later hear it had won the Best Canadian First Feature Film prize- it was one of the best and most surprising films I saw at the festival.

The Wild Hunt's premise is a young man naively entering a live-action role play (LARP) weekend in pursuit of his wayward girlfriend. There's some initial comedy in the fish-out-of-water concept, but real-life LARP aficionados needn't fear ridicule; the comedy is in the clash, not at the expense of players. The film in many ways actually celebrates this type of gaming and in more than a few instances defends it from common taunts.

From a simple beginning the story grows to a climax of epic proportions, bringing to mind Shakespearean levels of drama and tragedy. The Wild Hunt is an intelligent and impassioned exploration of fantasy and escapism, desire and obsession. Yet through all of this the film remains grounded in it's characters. One of the great strengths of the film is the realism and complexity at the heart of each role. You won't find any one-dimensional characters here. Instead we have very real people struggling with an escalating series of events, and the games quickly lose their innocence as people lose control.

The Wild Hunt is a truly remarkable film. The exploration of a blurring line between fantasy and reality is chilling, the performances are excellent, and from a technical standpoint it's equally well done. This is a film that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre- not only is it engaging to watch, but it leaves you with much to contemplate.

Larpers (more properly L.A.R.P.ers, i.e. Live-Action Role Players, i.e. folks that dress up like goblins and wizards and engage in foam-sword combat in the woods) have been one side of a cinematic love affair, of late. Documentaries like Darkon and Monster Camp try and peel back the fake fur and face paint to see the real people beneath, while comedies like Role Models see in the admittedly nerdy hobby a wellspring of both laughs and weirdly noble self-realization.

In director Alexandre Franchi's debut film The Wild Hunt, larping is something altogether more serious, and much more sinister. Erik Magnusson (Ricky Mabe), a Canadian born to an Icelandic father whom he now reluctantly cares for, is bothered by repeated dreams of a banging door and the sound of his girlfriend Evelyn (Tiio Horn) crying out in fear. Evelyn has left him for the weekend, to role play a princess in Erik's older brother Bjorn's larp-group, a viking and troll setting Bjorn (Mark A. Krupa) has all but disappeared into. To win her back, Erik must navigate the confusing, threatening larp world, where he discovers that some of the players aren't just escaping workaday responsibilities but are instead building a framework to work out some of their darker, more violent fantasies.

It's an enjoyable film, troubled by a difficult script. On the one hand it's enjoyably novel: setting a murder-and-revenge story amongst the assumedly meek, awkward foam-sword and teva-sandals crowd is an entertaining twist, and Franchi, helped enormously by good Gothic set dec and often beautiful cinematography by Claudine Sauvé is able to wring surprisingly high drama out of the whole thing. On the other hand, in building up to the grand guignol finale the film strains and struggles, testing credulity both in terms of character motivation and in terms of basic emotional mathematics: it's hard at points to understand why Erik doesn't just dismiss the whole mess and go home. That said, there's rather more of the former dark beauty than the latter character weirdness, and the film (especially as a Canadian film artifact) is massively enjoyable on its merits, of which there are plenty. Missteps along a very original path are easily excused. 8/10

I just finished watching this movie and I feel so happy I didn't miss it in the recent flood of low budget crap. Technically, "The Wild Hunt" can easily compete with 50 times more expensive movies (if the estimated budget of $300,000 listed on IMDb is true). Actors are less known, but they did helluva job. I'm trying right now to think of any drawbacks that I could put here, but nothing important comes to my mind. Maybe only that most of movie is going on in the dark. Also, action starts very late, so I had to fight with myself to survive first hour. Luckily I won, and the award was exciting finale. I was misled by it's trailer that it's a horror, but it's actually my mistake because it's clearly stated on it's IMDb page that it is a thriller/drama). Give it a try

I checked this out after I read some good reports from festival screenings. I really can't see the appeal of Live Action role-playing, so the film's greatest achievement is that it held my interest at all. I enjoyed the initial comedy of the absurd situations the non-playing lead character finds himself in, once he has barged his way into this make-believe environment. The plot shift and changes in tone from then on, which keeps it unpredictable.

The film is extremely well put together, especially for having been made on such a low budget. The cinematography and the unusual soundtrack are first class. There is some genuinely beautiful and haunting imagery, especially once the hunt gets underway.

For me the biggest problem with The Wild Hunt is that at its heart this is supposed to be a love story, but we never really learn much about the characters or their relationships. It's about a guy on a 'quest' to win back his girlfriend but she remains a cypher from the beginning to the end. I never understood her motivations at all, she just came across as unstable and selfish and therefore I never invested in what's at stake for him.

The other characters are underdeveloped as well and as someone who can't relate to the idea of LARP I would have liked to know more about what draws people to it other than the obvious implication that some do it to escape their real life problems.

I wasn't sure what to expect when i started this film. I really wnjoyed the fact that it combined several genres without coming off as farce. Incredible dialog, great acting, perfect production.