The Head Hunter

What seems like a simple and straightforward revenge story turns into a surprising and uncanny tale of life and death, amidst an eerie atmosphere.

Christopher Rygh's performance is astonishing. Even though the dialogue throughout the movie is scarce, he manages to convey all sorts of emotions through his acting, and turns this "one-character-film" into an amazing journey.

In this movie, what can't be seen is often as important as what is shown on the screen. So keep your ears peeled and let yourself be drifted by the carefully designed sound and the superb music score. Allow yourself to let your imagination flow freely and you won't regret it.

Last, but by no means least, the cinematography in this movie is simply beautiful, especially when it comes to lighting and camera shots. A note also to the fantastic decor and costumes, where no detail is too small to be dismissed.

This movie may have been made with a modest budget and a small crew, but that doesn't mean its quality isn't top-notch.

I watched The Head Hunter in this year's edition of Fantasporto - International Film Festival, and I loved it so much that on the last day of the festival, when the awarded movies were being shown again, I actually went in for a second screening (I don't do that often).

I strongly recommend it! (Rating: 9/10)

I really liked this movie. Beautifully filmed and great suspense. I can't understand why some people rated this so lowly. Maybe they didn't understand it. Definitely worth a watch.

This film is far better than its current IMDB rating.

For the budget this film is insane... great locations, cinematography and costume design. It's very atmospheric and at times reminded me of The Revenant, you get a real sense of the cold, harsh, isolated existence this character faces.

Like others have said its no action packed blockbuster. They clearly didn't have budget to rock out a big monster battle with CGI effects, so rather than ruin the film with a low budget attempt they made smart choices and spent the money wisely.

Nothing about this film felt low budget, the character design is amazing I would buy a hot toy figure of this dude tomorrow seriously!!

A man living in the woods with just one purpose, to seek revenge on the beast that killed his daughter.

A very simple story visualised in a simple way. You can either like the simplistic way it is told or not.

The Pros: Like I said, beautiful scenes, the visualisation is nicely done, some beautiful shots of the landscape and snow. I liked the idea of telling a story without much dialog, just a visualisation of some actions being taken and because of those actions you know already what is going on. The main character looked cool. You can see that a good amount of attention was given to the props. The music and sound effects are really adding to the ambiance of the movie.

The Cons: Like I said beautiful scenes but, I could not get into the story or into the tense moments that were created. And I think there were a couple of reasons that caused that.

Character

I could not feel or root for the main character, although he looked very cool. This was because of how he gave his daughter gifts at her grave. The grave is one of only 2 moments in the movie that we can see how much he loved her and therefore needed the revenge, but it felt as if it was just a matter of fact.

Lack of complexity in the actions.

In my opinion if there is lack in dialog, then the actions must make the audience think and that happened, but you could figure out what was going to happen pretty fast and that left the tense moments empty.

I liked the approach of this movie, but I couldn't get into it. Therefore I gave it a 5

In THE HEAD HUNTER, the protagonist, a hulking solitary warrior scarred by the loss of his daughter goes monster-hunting whenever called upon by a nearby castle, bringing back the heads of his kills and pinning them against a trophy wall. One day, the monster that killed his daughter comes back.

At heart, the movie tells a simple story, but the atmosphere created by the production design is just so outstanding that one cannot be helped but be drawn in. Considering that this entire film was shot for about 30,000 dollars, it is incredible how much quality was put into the visuals. The movie looks better than some which cost literally hundreds of times as much.

Alas, the lack of a budget did show itself indirectly. The movie skips most of the fight scenes, showing us merely the aftermath, except for the final fight between the two old enemies, but even neat camera tricks cannot cover up the shortfall created by the lack of a budget.

If there had been enough money to stage a couple exciting fight scenes, and also a visual depiction of the backstory leading up to the daughter's death, this could have been propelled to the top of the fantasy genre. I think for fans of medieval fantasy this film is still a must-see.

For others, there is a feast for the eyes, made possible by meticuluous attention to detail and brought to the fore by large stretches without any dialogue at all. The story structure gives the ending, in which ironically the final shot is nearly identical to the opening shot, unexpected emotional heft.

I would normally give this 6/10, but it is so close to being a good film, and I can still hardly believe the shoestring budget it was made on, that I still give it the rating of a good movie.