Film Review

Hunted (2020) • Shudder

A young woman escapes a kidnapping by two serial killers and must evade them in a forest overnight…

Shudder is good with horror. At time of writing, audiences are still trapped inside due to a pandemic, so what better way to escape than 11 weeks of exclusive original films? And who better for a killer-in-the-woods yarn than the acclaimed French director of an Academy Award-nominated animation set during the Iranian revolution?

Vincent Paronnaud, who adapted the graphic novel autobiography by Narjane Satrapi Persepolis (2007), has now made a trippy psychological revenge horror. Socio-political context may be worlds apart but the theme of one woman’s personal journey through a patriarchal hell, forged into something stronger, is universal. Sounds like the arc of every Final Girl; a structure so reiterated it’s as recognisable as folktales like Little Red Riding Hood. Paronnaud and co-writer Léa Pernollet are addressing that age old narrative of woman as prey. But as the IMDb summary so smugly outlines: “Man chases Woman — nothing new. Or is there?”