Hunter Hunter’s Shocking Ending Twist Explained

WARNING: Major spoilers ahead for Hunter Hunter

Director Shawn Linden’s 2020 thriller Hunter Hunter delivers a breathtaking, violent ending sequence that is bound to leave audiences talking, but what does it really mean? Here’s our breakdown of the movie’s ending, themes, and what could happen next.

Hunter Hunter focuses on a family of fur trappers who live an isolated life in the remote wilderness, where they get by through simple, and even somewhat primitive means. The family’s patriarch, Joseph (Devon Sawa), is a capable provider for his wife, Anne (Camille Sullivan), and daughter, Renee (Summer H. Howell), who is learning the trade from her father. While Anne is beginning to question whether their secluded lifestyle is right for her young daughter, who is homeschooled and isolated from others her same age, Joe doesn’t want to give up his lifestyle or his land, which has been in his family for generations. Joe and Renee are out hunting and checking their traps when Joe sees evidence that another predator is lurking in the woods — a wolf. He immediately becomes cautious and protective of his daughter, despite her being a capable enough hunter in her own right, and starts doubling down on protection to keep his family safe until he slays the beast.

The set up for Hunter Hunter makes it seem like a movie akin to The Revenant or other movies that pit man against beast; it even has the markings of a werewolf movie at times. However, the bone-chilling reveal that there’s a different kind of predator in the woods—a very human hunter—raises the stakes and sends the movie sprinting toward its wild conclusion. After Joe discovers a crime scene in the woods that’s posed and suggests a very sick individual is behind the crimes, he starts staying out all night, determined to hunt a human predator instead. Hunter Hunter plays out like a cautionary tale when Lou (Nick Stahl), an injured stranger, ends up being taken in by Anne and Renee. Inadvertently, they’ve let the real wolf into their home. The rest of the movie plays out like a gritty, exploitation film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Last House on the Left, and Anne ends up proving in full, bloody detail what can happen when a woman has nothing left to lose. However, by the end of Hunter Hunter, there’s still a few questions that remain — here’s what the movie’s ending really means.

What Happened To Anne After She Kills The Stranger?

After Anne viciously skins Lou alive in the shed after he’s murdered her husband and daughter, she’s caught by police. Anne walks past them, numb, and sits on her front porch. She seems to have accepted her fate, whatever that may be. Likely, she’ll be arrested and charged with at least one murder, but possibly more. Anne’s fate ultimately depends on if the police choose to believe her story of the very human wolf her family has encountered. Earlier in the movie, Anne went to police about her missing husband, who had broken their protocol by not staying in reasonably frequent contact via walkie talkie. She informed them not only of Joe’s disappearance, but expressed her concerns about the wolf. While she wasn’t taken seriously then, it’s possible that given the evidence that another officer found in the woods—Lou’s horrific crime scene—and Anne’s earlier disclosure to police, they’ll at least believe she didn’t murder her own family.

Unfortunately, Anne likely won’t get off scot-free since she did kill a man, albeit for revenge. However, there’s always the chance that she could plead insanity given her circumstances. Earlier, when Anne was speaking with local law enforcement, she was informed that the land doesn’t really belong to Joe’s family — it’s government-owned. While it might have belonged to them once, their lifestyle doesn’t precisely hint to them seeking out permits or legal purchases of property. More likely, they just stayed on the land, avoided detection, and nobody bothered them. In that regard, Anne is also technically homeless and, given their lifestyle, more civilized people might even already assume she’s mentally ill, feral, or just snapped. It’s a bleak ending, especially for a woman who was only trying to protect her family and do a good deed for a stranger who seemed to be in need — interestingly, Renee was suspicious of him from the start. After Anne tended to his injuries, a clever shot of her curious facial expression suggested that she might even recognize his injuries as being from her father’s bear traps.

Was Joe Hunting A Wolf The Whole Time?

At one point, Lou makes a comment that suggests Joe might not have been hunting a wolf at all. In fact, the sentiment expressed suggests maybe Joe was aware of Lou’s presence the whole time, and only told his family he was hunting a wolf. This does disregard the fact somewhat that Renee and Anne encountered a wolf out in the wild while they were washing clothes in the river. Anne bravely stared down the predator and got it to flee. However, their family dog didn’t survive its encounter with the beast. This could be purely logical, as given the area they live in, it’s possible wolves are all over the woods. Just because Anne and Renee encountered one wolf doesn’t mean they encountered the same wolf—or the only wolf—that Joe was supposedly hunting. Joe does start hunting and tracking the wolf prior to his discovery of Lou’s crime scene, which could also suggest that at least for a little while, he was being honest. However, the particular caution that Joe expresses in relation to the wolf—particularly in how he’s overly careful about Renee being out in the woods by herself, at all—suggests he knows more than is immediately revealed.

Renee isn’t as skilled of a hunter as her father, but she has shown to be capable with weaponry, knows how to hunt and track, and presumably knows the woods well, since she goes out hunting and tracking with her father a lot. In fact, throughout the movie, Renee is mistaken for a boy. What Hunter Hunter does really well is hold cards tightly to its chest; the conundrum about Joe and the wolf is a perfect example of this. After Joe discovered the crime scene, he unmistakably starts tracking Lou, as he’s discovered a possible second threat to his family. However, given that there’s not really a lot of background given about Lou, his crimes, whether he’s a known serial killer, or any further details there, it’s possible Joe has been aware of Lou for a while. If Lou was in Joe’s periphery already, it’s likely he wouldn’t tell his wife and daughter about him; Joe is a confident, capable man who would likely want to take matters into his own hands and not scare his family in the process, particularly since Anne has already expressed a desire to stop living in the woods. Hunter Hunter becomes infinitely more intriguing if Joe’s “wolf” was actually a human monster the whole time.

What Hunter Hunter’s Ending Really Means

Hunter Hunter initially is meant to seem like a human hunter vs. an animal one, an apex predator type of species. Or, given its horror roots, perhaps some supernatural creature or other similarly monstrous threat. However, there’s a distinct connotation between the battle of one hunter against another. The ending revealed that the other “hunter” was, in fact, Lou. He and Joe went head-to-head, but Joe ultimately didn’t make it out alive. However, when Lou arrived at Anne’s doorstep, she ended up proving to be the ultimate hunter, even accidentally. While she barely managed to get the upper hand on Lou when he attacked her and tried to subdue her—likely to kill her, if not worse—she ended up surviving based on grit and instinct alone. In some respects, Anne’s fight for survival could be seen as a mother’s almost animal-like instinct to protect her young. Anne stands in for a feral mother wolf, one who longs to be reunited with her cub knowing that she’s lost her mate. Anne’s family has been decimated; her fight against Lou means much more than a selfish interest in preserving her own life.

Interestingly, what happened to Renee is never shown. In that regard, the audience is able to dream up whatever grisly fate they wish, which is perhaps even far worse than what Lou actually did. However, it’s pretty clear that Renee was his final victim. There’s nothing else that would warrant such a cold, completely insane reaction from Anne, who was nearly in tears when she faced a wolf, heartbroken at the death of her dog, and even struggled to snap a rabbit’s neck in order to feed her family. Linden reveals the true meaning behind the movie’s title and its overall theme in this final scene, which is mercilessly drawn out, almost forcing the audience to choose whether to recoil in horror as if they’re condemning Anne’s brutality or cheer her on, effectively choosing to condone her actions instead. Hunter Hunter reveals the true “hunter” figure — a mother who has lost everything, including herself, to tragedy. In essence, Anne has become a hunter through circumstance alone; it was never precisely in her nature, but became an integral part of her all the same.

About The Author

Jack Wilhelmi
(581 Articles Published)

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Jack Wilhelmi is the horror features editor at Screen Rant, and has been with the site since 2019. He is a lifelong fan of the horror genre, and loves any excuse to discuss genre-related topics, since none of his friends dare challenge him in horror trivia. He has been published on the independent horror blog Morbidly Beautiful, and has covered major genre film festivals such as Cinepocalypse in Chicago. He has also served as a judge for the Ax Wound Film Festival.

In his free time, he is a devoted dog dad to a high-spirited rescue pup named Peter Quill and enjoys volunteering with various animal rescue organizations. Jack likes to travel and explore dark tourism-related and other various haunted locations. He enjoys studying psychology, the paranormal, and will watch literally any schlocky B-movie on the planet for a laugh.

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