Jim Thorpe Independent Film Festival 2024 – Writer/director Annick Blanc’s French Candian thriller Hunting Daze is one of those films grounded in real world horror. To hear her tell it at the Q & A, she based the film, in part, on the abuse and gaslighting that she suffered at the hands of a film teacher. While the feature deals with toxic masculinity, it’s never heavy-handed with its message and has complex characterization. It doesn’t underestimate the audience’s ability to arrive at their own conclusions, either.

Nahéma Ricci stars as Nina, a sex worker, who, frustrated after a bachelor party in rural Quebec, ditches and lashes out at the group for good reason. She then asks one of the group’s members, Kevin (Frédéric Millaire-Zouvi), if she can stay with him at a hunting cabin until she can find a ride home. Reluctantly, and due to Nina’s persistence, he agrees. The other men vote to allow her to stay, as long as she acts like them and undergoes a strange initiation process. She agrees, and she certainly holds her own. She hunts, she drinks, and she dances. She transforms into one of the wolves of the pack. Yet, the whole time, she has a series of strange dreams that underscore the danger she may be in and the brutality of the men that hides under some of their welcoming veneer.

The group becomes unsettled after the arrival of a mysterious stranger, Doudos (Noubi Ndiaye), who certainly plays the role of the Other. When a horrible accident happens, the pack is plunged into deeper peril. The rest of the cast is rounded out by Marc Beaupré, Alexandre Landry, Maxime Genois, and Bruno Marcil, who plays Bernard, the pack leader who acts as a strange mentor to Nina. To be clear, though, while this film certainly addresses toxic masculinity, these men are not one-note characters. Each has distinct traits. During the Q & A, Blanc mentioned how the men represented different personas of her abuser. That comment gives the film deeper context and highlights the care Blanc took in crafting these characters. This isn’t a rape revenge film, either. In that regard, Blanc continually thwarts expectations of what this film is and where it’s going.

Drug-induced and hypnotic sequences further underscore Nina’s justified anxieties that she just may be in danger. These moments include striking visuals that aren’t easy to forget. As a whole, Hunting Daze explores complex power dynamics regarding gender and even race. The feature continually defies a viewer’s expectations and is an unsettling feature with one heck of an ending. Blanc took a traumatic experience and crafted a film anchored in real world horrors with strong characterization.

8 Out of 10