The Hunt จับ ฆ่า ล่าโหด (2020) ⭐️ 6.6/10

The Hunt จับ ฆ่า ล่าโหด (2020)
The Hunt (2020)
R | 1h 30min | Action, Horror, Thriller | 13 March 2020 (USA)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8244784/

Director: Craig Zobel
Writers: Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Stars: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz

The Hunt จับ ฆ่า ล่าโหด เรื่องราวของคนแปลกหน้า 12 คนที่ตื่นขึ้นมาโดยที่พวกเขาไม่รู้จักกันมาก่อน และไม่รู้ว่าอยู่ที่ไหน และไม่รู้ว่าพวกเขาทำไมถึงถูกเลือกมา แต่ที่แน่ๆ พวกเขามีสิ่งเดียวที่เหมือนก็คือการเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของ เกมล่าที่ชื่อว่า The Hunt หนึ่งในเรื่องราวทางอินเทอร์เน็ตที่พูดถึงเหล่าชนชั้นสูงที่จับคนมาเพื่อล่าแทนการล่าสัตว์นั่นเอง แต่แล้วแผนการของเหล่ากลุ่มชนชั้นสูงนั้นก็ดูเหมือนจะเริ่มผิดแผกไปจากเดิมเนื่องจาก Crystal หนึ่งในผู้ถูกล่านั้นรู้ทันแผนการและได้มาเจอกับหญิงลึกลับคนหนึ่งที่เป็นจุดศูนย์กลางของเรื่องราวทั้งหมดนั่นเอง

In a group text, Athena Stone anticipates an upcoming hunt of “deplorables” at a manor. Later, on her private jet, she kills a man who staggers out from the cargo hold.

Eleven captives wake up gagged, in a forest, for the hunt. In a clearing, they find a cache of weapons and keys to their gags, but upon retrieving them, five are killed by an unseen enemy.

Three captives escape over a barbed-wire fence to a service station. The station’s owners, an elderly couple consisting of Miranda “Ma” and Julius “Pop”, identify their location as a point on Route 31 near Elaine, Arkansas. The three escapees, each kidnapped from a different part of the United States, realize their situation’s similarity to the “Manorgate” conspiracy theory. One of the three eats a poisoned donut and collapses, while Ma and Pop (who are amongst the captors’ ranks) kill the rest with poison gas. They then clean up the station for the next person to come in.

A fourth captive, Crystal Creasey, arrives. Asking for cigarettes and their location, she makes conversation with Ma and Pop, and the latter get nervous. Crystal then attacks and kills the couple with a sawed-off shotgun the couple had under the counter; she reveals that the cigarettes were too expensive for Arkansas.

Inspecting the pickup truck outside, she finds a Croatian licence plate underneath a fake Arkansas plate, and a booby-trap wired to the driver’s door. She later encounters another captive; a conspiracy theorist podcaster named Gary, and warns him from taking the truck. They board a train car full of refugees, whom Gary believes to be crisis actors; the train is then raided by Croatian soldiers. When Gary tries to convince the soldiers of Manorgate and the refugees’ perfidy, a refugee, “Crisis Mike” admits to Gary that he and only he is an actor and one of the hunters, but says the raid was not planned for, and offers a head start for Gary’s cooperation. Gary uses a grenade the actor had hidden to kill him, and Crystal is taken to a refugee camp.

Crystal meets another escaped prisoner named Don at the camp, and Oliver, an envoy from the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, arrives to take them to the embassy. On the drive there, Oliver probes into why they were selected for the hunt; suspicious, Crystal kicks Oliver out of the car and runs him over. She and Don find Gary’s body in the trunk with a box marked “bribe money” and a map. The faux envoy was one of the hunters.

Crystal tells Don the story of “the Jackrabbit and the Box Turtle,” a version of The Tortoise and the Hare in which the Jackrabbit kills the Box Turtle after losing. At the envoy’s intended destination (which is shown to be close to where the captives originally found the weapons cache and were subsequently killed), Crystal kills the hunters she finds and wounds their tactical consultant Sgt. Dale. Athena calls out to Don via radio, asking if he killed Crystal. When Don refuses to disarm, Crystal kills him. Crystal tortures the wounded Sgt. Dale to get Athena’s location and then kills him.

A flashback reveals that Athena’s group text exchange was a joke. However, it was leaked on the internet, creating furor over “Manorgate”. Subsequently, the group text’s participants, whose careers were ruined, decide to make Manorgate come true. They abducted people who shared and produced internet materials relating to Manorgate. Athena is personally offended by a social media post Crystal had made about her, and insists on her inclusion, nicknaming her “Snowball”.

When Crystal confronts Athena, Athena mocks Crystal’s personal history. Crystal tells Athena that she’s confused her with another Crystal from her hometown, but her middle name is spelled May, rather than Mae. Crystal and Athena get into a drawn out fight, eventually impaling one another on the two blades of a food processor; Athena dies, but Crystal gets a second wind upon seeing a jackrabbit appear near Athena’s body. She cauterizes her wound, dresses in Athena’s clothes, takes Athena’s dog, and leaves on her jet.