Os Caçadores

Well it seems for a change someone not involved with a film is posting the first user review. I suspect this is because everyone involved with the film is far too busy denying they had anything to do with it!

I never let the words "low budget" or "independent" put me off a film, I've seen some great films by looking for this kind of stuff. I've also seen some terrible ones and this baby just joined the list very near the top.

OK so marketed as a horror film you soon realise it's anything but. NO matter, I like a good thriller...which this ain't. Confused is the words that comes to mind. Filmed in France but set who knows where, dodgy American accents mixed with a large portion of French language. Plot could be written on the back of a postage stamp but somehow ends up with a 1hr 50min film...

For me the film as advertised started at the 1hr 30min point and by then I was losing the will to live. The main location was interesting but was never used to it's full potential and the effects! Good God the effects... Body parts straight out of a dusty corner at The London Dungeon, guns with holes in the end only an airgun pellet would fit through, watery blood and the most amazing trees that shoot sparks when hit with bullets.

Acting wasn't horrendous given what they had to work with, music was OK. Cinematography was OK with the notable exception of the nightmare scenes which where, frankly, shamefully bad.

Words fail me.

Yes folks, I find this little film very interesting, even if it is a bit long. I would expect a bonus with deleted scenes with such a film. But the same scenes have been kept, unlike many other movies of this kind. I won't repeat the story, a hunter, man hunting one, one more, after the hundred of those we see since several years now. What I like in this feature is that there is no real bad guys, because the "bad" ones are described in such a way that we may feel some empathy for them, for instance the computer repairing, or the other one - school teacher I think to remember. So, during the first part of this movie, you wonder what will happen for all these characters - because there are many others - to meet. And you don't expect that it will happen in such a way.

I like that, it's not so common.

But for the rest, yes, it's not a masterpiece. A genuine B movie.

But when I bought it, I already knew it.

So...

A lot of negative reviews, oh well.. If people were expecting another run-on-the-mill horror to freak out to on a Saturday night, then this film obviously granted a disappointment, as it has a somewhat different angle, and the film is actually more of a suspense/mystery than a horror, really.

On a positive note, the filming locations were absolutely fabulous, the cinematography was of high quality in every respect, and even though the English spoken in the film was regarded as 'bulky' by some reviewers, you cannot really dismiss the fact that it is a French/Belgian movie. I, for one, thought all the way it was set in Canada (in Quebec), in that case, the language inconsistencies of the film would have been pretty well explained :-).

You could say that the acting was somewhat peculiar, but "peculiar" does not necessarily mean "bad". After all, French/Belgians films sometimes have a different take on acting. Think of, for example, 'Calvaire', that contains as much strange humour as 'The Hunters', you just need to be able to notice it :-).

All in all, 'The Hunters' is a rather strange experience meant not for everyone; on the other hand, as mentioned in other reviews, it offers you very nice photography, absolutely fabulous filming locations (the fort!), some sociological commentaries, and a rather decent cast, the tempo of the film is pretty slow, but in this case, it only compliments the piece.

Trying to secure a potential client, a detective escorting a witness away from an abandoned fortress in the middle of the woods finds the area overrun by sadistic hunters attempting to keep their hunter grounds quiet and must try to get away alive.

Overall this was quite a disappointing effort that does have a few good points. When this one gets to the end, this one is incredibly entertaining as it tends to focus more on the stalking and brutality of the hunters than possible, which is immensely fun with the first seemingly innocent encounter along the trail and the following ambush setting the stage for their game through the woods resulting in his capture making for a fine start to this. There's the demented escape attempt from the underground tunnels and the fun brawling encounter with the deranged hunter that comes off rather nicely here, as well as the first big chase through the woods after his escape where he comes into a thrilling gunfight along the mad dash to get away which is highly exciting, along with the final gunfight pinned down against the wall that makes for a good time overall here. Those are enjoyable enough but the big flaws here manage to hold them off quite well. The biggest issue here is the fact that this one is just so boring and bland to get going that it's nearly impossible to get anything really interesting here for most of the first hour. Tending to the utterly down-beat and depressing lives of the hunters makes the film a drag to get through with this one as hardly any of these scenes make you interested in where this one's going, and the other scenes of the detective trying to get acclimated to life on the force and gaining a girlfriend with the secretary here are no better since these are just dull and lame, and both of them keep this one from getting to its horror scenes for an extended period of time. As well, this goes to such an extent at trying to humanize them that the groups' actions become quite curious as to why they would engage in this, especially at such a crowded area that occurs here and makes their decision to do this quite hard to reason. Lastly, there's also the incredibly lame finale that just doesn't seem to know what it wants to do, from agonizingly slow, drawn-out scenes with background characters that don't mean anything, a torturously slow captive sequence that makes no sense and a limp, lifeless resolution that goes nowhere and really tends to stand out as being really lame. These here do manage to bring this one down significantly.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

It was an absolute waste of time. The trailer is much better than the movie. It made me feel stupid because I actually watched it until the end since I thought that something interesting might happen any minute !!

At some point I felt like watching a movie done by college students! low budget is not an excuse, I've seen so many interesting low budget movies that really take you there, to the thriller atmosphere. For instance, the caller (2011) has all the elements of a good thriller movie.

It also failed to deliver the psychological part which made the script much more fragile. With some movies you know that you shouldn't expect a lot from the beginning but this one had a good start somehow which I hated because it fools the viewer to expect more when there is nothing coming that worth to watch.

After I watched this, the only sentence that was in mind is " are they serious? "