The Head Hunter (2018)
Grief. Anger. Vengeance.
I saw this movie while bingeing through the selections of movies available on VUDU last year, and it’s sat in the back of my mind since. As the new year approached, they had a sale - and for five dollars, I think I could chance it not being great so I grabbed it. So I watched the trailer and it tempered my expectations to what I hope is a suitable level, let’s see if the movie starts of the year on a good foot or not. Tonight, we slay some monsters in The Head Hunter.
Like I said, I watched the trailer in this and it put a certain curve to my expectations before I went into this. I got the impression that the movie was going to be more horror oriented, and I also somehow got the feeling that it was going to be somewhat lower budget. My guess there is largely because the trailer really makes it seem that we only get a single actor in the movie - and usually, if you are going to have a single-person movie, it’s going to end up feeling either artsy or real budget - which isn’t always bad, I’ve seen some good things done with movies that only have a single actor in them. So in all honesty, I went in at best expecting a mediocre movie, so keep that in mind over the course of this.
The plot here is… well, I’m going to call it simple. Monster kills man’s kid, man kills monsters like it’s his day job (which it actually probably is) to eventually get the chance to get revenge on the monster that killed man’s kid. It provides for infinite directions with which it could have gone - but really the plot here is as simple as it sounds. You can read into moments if you want, but in one of those “artsy” sort of fashions this movie isn’t going to give you hard answers to anything. Heck, you’ll feel lucky when any of whats going on even has words to go with it, given most the time we have a man on screen alone, the amount of dialogue - heck, even monologues - is pretty dang minimal. The entire first part of the movie - perhaps even the first half - feels rather slow. It’s setting up a world, giving you time with a character, setting up Chekov’s Gun - but it also vastly feels like things aren’t really happening. There isn’t any real horror going on, there’s certainly not any real action going on - and with the lack of talking I won’t be surprised to hear of some people just straight up tuning out to the movie. When you hit that final stretch though, the horror comes in quite well.
The horror does have a problem though - foresight and stereotypical tropes. Our monster hunter makes plenty of stupid decisions during the horror section, and things that don’t make a ton of sense also happen - digging won’t make much sense when I call it out now, but after you’ve seen it you’ll probably agree with me. Regardless of that though, it uses it’s dark lighting (seriously, it’s a darkly lit when it’s not a day shot) quite well, and between the tensions presented on screen and the music (with occasional jump scare riffs) it actually feels pretty good as far as scary goes. It’s also one of the only times in the movie where when something happens, it happens on screen instead of just being heard through sound effects.
Sound is also mostly good with a few bits of off moments. The off-screen fights are audible fine, and you get the impression that there’s a short skirmish going on out there. Emotions through sound comes through nicely as well, but at the same time audio quality for the actors lines all has this underlying fizz to it. Sometimes you barely notice it, other times it sounds like perhaps the mic is blowing out a little and it just didn’t get balanced back down. Other times, largely the final act’s creature, apply some grumbly distortion to make it sound spooky or more monstrous I suppose, and it’s largely not a big deal. Despite quality issues that may crop up at points, you’ll never really have a hard time understanding any of the few lines floating about. You can turn on subtitles - but with the amount of lines, it’s got more words devoted to sound effects than it does spoken lines - and at one point it add’s an extra 0 in after a word. I’m thinking perhaps that’s on VUDU’s end and not just straight hardcoded into the movie, but who knows.
How to get ahead in life.
Part of the movie that drew me in was the costume. Yeah, some of the monster heads aren’t particularly super impressive - but most look quite fine, particularly with the lighting used on them. The main characters out fit though reeks of dark fantasy, and I can dig that. Leather scales, furs, battle damage, little skull embellishments, and a whole lot of chainmail that never gets used because why would you want extra protection? By far what I would say is the best part of the movie. Other effects also exist - mostly violent in nature - that look pretty decent as well. It can be a bit gruesome looking, but at the same time it’s not exactly guts and entrails like a zombie flick or something.
Now, more so than a lot of movies I noticed a lot of continuity stuff here. Sometimes it’s a little toss of thing you don’t care about - a wanted poster being folded in one shot and opened in the next. Other times, it just sort of makes you question a bit how it happened - such as some face injuries that we would think would cause damage to the mask, but instead have occurred through the mask. That sort of thing might bother some people more than others - heck, you could hand-wave it off as he put the helmet back on after he got the injuries when it fell off in a fight or whatever. Probably the most impressive actual visual effect that isn’t the costume is a troll that makes an incredibly brief appearance.
Now, monsters exist in this world, but we really don’t see anything more than heads and aftermath battle damage on the main. A daughter exists, but her extent of contribution to the movie as an actor is laying in a bed and delivering less than five lines at the start, with the occasional silent flashbacks to the same thing. A lone archer appears in the background at one point to deliver a new wanted poster. A horse exists for some of the movie. Mostly all the acting is thrust upon the main, and although he does a fine job there’s really only so much you can do to make a movie keep you invested when nothing is really going on. He can act in pain, physical or emotional, and angry and sad. It’s pretty well done, considering the lack of lines he delivers. A person could read into things way more than they need to for this movie - but I do suppose it’s nice that it’s there, and given how potentially reflective it could be it might even be intentional to draw in those who want to think about that sort of thing.
Dark fantasy makes such baller costumes.
The movie gave me what I expected it to be, although honestly I had hoped perhaps for a bit more. The rather slow start is going to be rough to overcome for those looking to get into the solid horror element at the end, but the costume and horror part is quite nice. I feel that this movie would serve as a great screener to pitch a movie or show of larger scale, despite how that also sort of flies in the face of the reflective elements of the movie. The universe seems interesting, the armor was awesome, and if the movie had more show than infer as you were, it’d be perhaps a bit more palatable during the slow opening. Perhaps rentable for if you don’t mind a dark fantasy movie that doesn’t show too much and ends with a decent horror section - but probably not more than that for a lot of folks.