Warning! Major spoilers for The Hunt

Blumhouse’s controversy-laden social horror film, The Hunt, made a bold move by killing off unexpected characters very early in the film.

Though certainly plagued by the spread of the COVID-19 viral pandemic leading to an incredibly low opening weekend box office, Craig Zobel, Nick Cuse, and Damon Lindelof’s The Hunt delivers by keeping its audience guessing from start to finish. While originally flagged as insensitive, violent media that condemned “deplorables” and the supporters of President Donald Trump, The Hunt speaks to political divide and the perils of believing everything people read on social media and the Internet more than it does to politics directly. Even so, it was originally delayed by Universal and pulled off the release schedule for September 2019, then moved to a March 2020 release date instead.

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The film follows a group of “hunted” who are dropped in a strange location and given weapons before they are targeted by a group of people known as “the elite”. While there are many twists and turns throughout the film, one of the most shocking happened in the film’s first quarter.

Why The Hunt Kills Off Emma Roberts & Other “Main” Characters So Early

Though the actual opening of The Hunt is plenty violent, the main kick-off sequence where the surviving strangers are dropping into a field, given the opportunity to unshackle each other from their mouth restraints, and load up with weapons, is relentless. It also proves just how misleading and clever the marketing and promotion for The Hunt has been. For example, based on promotional images, trailers, and name alone, it would seem as if Emma Roberts, who has developed quite a reputation for herself in the horror genre with her work on American Horror Story, Scream Queens, and Scream 4, would survive at least until the middle of the film.

However, this is not the case. As soon as the hunters start firing on the hunted from an in-ground bunker, the hunted start to fight back and duck for cover. Within the first few seconds of the action sequence, Yoga Pants (Roberts) is pulled behind a crate by Justin Hartley’s character, “Trucker”, and expresses relief barely in time to get her head blown off. The rest of the sequence continues with a shifting perspective from one character to another. After Yoga Pants is murdered, Hartley’s character is in control, and ends up stepping on a land mine just minutes later, also dying. Ike Barinholtz’s character, Staten Island, survives the initial shoot-out only to be killed in a secondary sequence by a “mom and pop” couple who pretend to run a gas station.

The Hunt establishes quickly that nobody is safe, and every major actor attached to the project is expendable. This sets the precedent that the characters truly are in danger, that this isn’t a predictable horror movie, and adds a lean, biting tension to the film’s already lean 90 minute run-time. Eventually, Betty Gilpin’s character, Crystal May, emerges in the traditional final girl trope that is anything but, as she is trained military, and ends up being the one to square off with the leader of the “elites”, Athena (Hilary Swank). While Gilpin emerges as the sole survivor, The Hunt brutally dispatches the remainder of the cast on both sides of the aisle in fun, surprising ways throughout the film.

Key Release Dates
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  • The Hunt (2020)Release date: Mar 13, 2020
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About The Author


Jack Wilhelmi
(581 Articles Published)

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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