CalloftheHunter

Call of the Hunter (2002)

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of independent English movies. What I’ve learned is that they are just as capable as we here in the US of making some pretty bad flicks! That said every once in a while something interesting comes my way. I’d consider Call of the Hunter one of those interesting movies.

The setup is that we are following a documentary crew as they head off to an isolated English estate to shoot a movie about the legend of Herne the Hunter. We get to hear the different origin stories of Herne, including some bits about him being connected to Pagan rituals and the Druids. This does a nice job setting up the rest of the story and adds some mystery to what is going on as the events unfold. After the crew arrives we find out that the original producer was murdered on the grounds of the house! This is just the first ominous thing that happens. Before you know it people are getting strung up in the trees, drug into the woods and having fun with the cutlery! Who lives and who dies? Why is Herne so pissed off? These are all questions you will have the answer to when the credits roll.

I sort of dig Call of the Hunter. It isn’t perfect and has some issues, but for an independent movie they do a pretty good job. There are some things the movie does very well. The story doesn’t break any new ground, but I did thing the Herne legend was fun. I was especially impressed at how they kept drawing out the origins of the legend and kept the audience in the dark for the first half of the movie. Was he a druid or the king’s huntsman? Or maybe it was a bit of both. Since the movie is basically about the legend this helped keep me interested in what was happening on screen. I also thought the characters were fleshed out really well and acted like real people. The best example of this is the Dan character. When he is initially introduced he looks to be the womanizing arrogant caricature that tends to populate horror films. But as the movie rolls along he is given a back-story and ends up coming across as a flawed, but real person.

This also brings me to another strong point of the movie, the acting. This has to be one of the better casts that I’ve seen in an independent production in a long time. From top to bottom the performances are solid. The lines are delivered naturally, which gives the movie a nice flow and rhythm. When the characters are supposed to be scared they really seem to be. You also have a jilted husband that seems to be in honest pain and one of the characters goes a bit loony, which is also played perfectly.

There is obviously a lot of talent both in front of and behind the camera. This makes the flaws of the movie really annoying. First up there I have some issues with some of the music. For whatever reason a decision was made to match up blaring, generic rock music with several of the scenes. It just doesn’t match up for me. In fact every time they do it I was pulled out of the movie and the story. Also there is this inexplicable part of the movie where they for a brief period go from color to black and white and have a split screen thing happening where you see 4 different characters searching for something. Not sure if someone was trying to be clever or creative, but if Ang Lee can’t pull this off then maybe you should have passed… Just saying.

The biggest criticism that I have for Call of the Hunter involves the writing itself. The movie starts off so brilliantly and is very clever. But the last 30 minutes or so just falls apart. It is almost as if they ran out of ideas. We get an hour of atmosphere and character development, with some reasonably fun and effective jump scares tossed in. Then the movie becomes them splitting up and running into the woods. Not once, or twice, but again and again. Intelligent characters suddenly start to do really dumb things and get killed. What happened guys? You were so close to making a really cool movie.

In the end I still think that Call of the Hunter is worth checking out. I would just say at this point if you could rent it or get it on the cheap it would be best. With the way the movie falls apart I don’t see many people wanting to revisit it. For more information check out http://www.rsquaredfilms.com/films/call_of_the_hunter.html

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer