93 min | NR | December 18, 2020 | IFC Films
A family lives off the grid in the deep woods, trapping fur and convinced a wolf is hunting their catch. Then a wounded stranger turns up at the edge of their land. The wolf is the least of their problems.
Joseph and Anne Mersault live off the grid with their young daughter Renee, trapping fur in the deep woods and selling pelts to scrape by. A wolf has been killing their catch, and Joseph becomes convinced the same wolf killed a man years earlier. Shawn Linden’s film starts as a story about a predator stalking the trapline. It becomes a story about a family that has chosen isolation and discovered that isolation offers no protection. The wilderness is not the threat here. The threat is what walks into it.
Devon Sawa plays Joseph as a man whose competence is also his blind spot. He knows the woods. He does not know when his certainty is leading him away from his family at the worst possible moment. Camille Sullivan carries the heart of the film as Anne, a woman exhausted by a life she did not fully choose and worried about raising Renee in a cabin with no electricity and no neighbors. Summer H. Howell makes Renee watchful and quiet, a child who has learned that fear is normal. Nick Stahl arrives as Lou, an injured stranger Anne nurses back from the brink, and Stahl plays him with a politeness that never sits quite right.
Linden writes and directs, and he builds the dread through patience and restraint. The cinematography keeps the frame tight and the woods close, so the trees press in and the cabin feels small. The sound design does the heavy lifting. Linden lets long stretches play with no score, just the snap of branches and the wind, so every off-screen noise becomes a question. The editing holds shots past the point of comfort and forces the audience to sit inside the waiting. When the violence finally comes, it lands hard because the film has denied it for so long.
The final stretch is where Hunter Hunter declares what it is. The slow burn pays off in a turn so brutal and so abrupt that it reframes everything before it. Sullivan owns those last minutes completely. The film asks what a person will do when the safety they built for their family has already failed. It answers with a closing image that refuses any comfort and stays with you.