Hunted (2021)

Hunted is the kind of lean, ferocious survival thriller that grabs you by the collar and doesn’t let go, turning a familiar “run through the woods” premise into something mythic and unnervingly personal. Vincent Paronnaud shoots the forest like a living trap—beautiful, hostile, and eerily storybook—while the sound design keeps your nerves tuned to every snap of a branch and distant footfall. Lucie Debay is the film’s beating heart, selling every ounce of fear, grit, and stubborn will to live with a performance that makes the ordeal feel immediate rather than exploitative. It’s nasty, intense, and purposefully angry, so it won’t be for viewers who want their horror gentle, but if you’re in the mood for a grim, propulsive ride with real craft behind the brutality, it’s absolutely worth the plunge.

Hunted is clearly aiming for a feral, feminist survival thriller with fairy-tale wolf imagery and a final-act catharsis where the hunted turns hunter. The problem is it often mistakes nastiness for tension: the sadistic streak can feel lingering rather than purposeful, and the tone wobbles between gritty realism and mythic symbolism without fully earning either. If you’re sensitive to misogynistic violence, or you want a tight, coherent chase movie with a clear point of view, this may feel exploitative, muddled, and more predictable than it thinks. The redeeming side is that Lucie Debay commits hard and the forest setting delivers some raw, physical suspense—just don’t go in expecting elegance or subtlety.