A creepy and intense watch that climaxes with an uncompromisingly brutal final act, Hunter Hunter subverts expectations and forces its audience to reflect on the savagery of our world.

The world wants to kill us. It is an uncomfortable fact that even within the comfy confines of civilization is a world uncompromising in its thirst for violence. We can establish laws to protect us and build walls to shield us, yet through the cracks seeps a cascade of violence brutal and without remorse. The wolf often devours the sheep.

Mersault (Devon Sawa) has opted to take his family off the grid. A woodsman and fur trapper like his father before him, Mersault along with his wife Anne (Camille Sullivan) and their adolescent daughter Renee (Summer H. Howell) make a home out of a cabin in the woods. They hunt for their keep, provide an education at home, and refuse to own devices with long range walkie-talkies the exception.

When their isolation is threatened by the return of a rogue wolf, Mersault goes on the hunt to eliminate this threat. This plot-point is front and centre of all the promotional material for Hunter Hunter, and for the most part the film lives up to that promise. Writer and director Shawn Linden (The Good Lie), however, brilliantly and skilfully adds other elements to this story that speaks to the savagery of mankind, and a journey into madness that is shocking in its extremes.

Throughout Linden provides a tense air that never wavers, as this family of hunters contend with death stalking their every move. Great use of the Canadian wilderness really sells that this family is in isolation from civilization, and the cinematography by Greg Nicod (his feature debut) successfully presents mother nature as a gritty and earthy playscape where predators lurks around every corner.

Performances from all involved are great, with the standout being Camille Sullivan. It is her character’s journey that is the core of Hunter Hunter, a wife and mother forced to face the violent and unrelenting nature of a world that consumes the weak without prejudice.

An incredibly brutal final act gives Hunter Hunter notoriety, yet the film as a whole is an engrossing albeit disturbing watch. Linden knows how to dig under the skin of his audience with nightmare inducing precision. For those with the courage to do so, Hunter Hunter is a recommended watch.