Holed up inside a remote gas station in the dead of night, social media manager Alice (Camille Rowe) falls prey to a sociopathic sniper with a massive chip on his shoulder and an even bigger mouth than that.
Trapped between the aisles with only cans of Spam and a growing pile of dead bodies for company, Alice kills time conversing with the killer via walkie-talkie. Between futile escape attempts, the pair trade ideological debate, the highlights of which you’ll recognise from Trump rallies, Fox News, and the darker recesses of social media.
Thankfully, director Franck Khalfoun’s nihilistic thriller (based on a Spanish film from 2015) is more than just Phone Booth with updated buzzwords vomited all over the screenplay. While the battle of the ideologies is real – and may turn off the more politically disaffected – it’s backed up by well-staged action, a smart use of the setting, and a pervasive sense of claustrophobia.
If the sniper’s yapping gets tiresome after a while, violent diversion comes from the unsuspecting cannon fodder who are unfortunate enough to stumble onto this bullet-ridden battleground. Meanwhile, Rowe gives a phenomenal performance as the killer’s would-be victim, while Stasa Stanic does great things from the other end of the sniper’s scope, believably inhabiting the role of MAGA nut/anti-vaxxer/war veteran/gun nut and managing to deliver the unhinged rants at hand with charisma.
This is well-trodden ground to anyone who has been paying attention to the state of the nation since, oh-say, January 2017 (and going back even earlier than that to Sandy Hook and subsequent national tragedies), but this well-aimed thriller still finds plenty to say.
NIGHT OF THE HUNTED is out in UK Cinemas and Shudder from October 20th, 2023
