By: Amir Salaad

WARNING: This review contains Major spoilers

‘The Hunt (Jagten)’ is a drama movie directed by Thomas Vinterberg and released in 2012. This movie is about a nice kindergarten assistant living in a small Danish village when his life is ruined by a false accusation. The rating of this movie is R because it has some sexual content, some violence and language.

Lucas is a lonely guy but has some respect in his community and he’s getting his life back together after a divorce and custody battle for his son Marcus. He works at a preschool in the village where the kids all love him, like Klara, who’s the daughter of his best friend, Theo. After Klara says something about Lucas touching her to the principal, Lucas gets called out for touching Klara. Even though there is no evidence against Lucas, and he’s denying it, the whole village goes against him.

When the film keeps going, the person watching can see Lucas’s life really fall apart. He gets banned from the grocery store, he gets assaulted, and gets shut out by his so called “family”. The tension in the film gets higher as ‘The Hunt’ goes from Lucas getting cut off from the whole village to him getting beat up. And all of this happens when the viewer knows that Lucas is really innocent. The closer it gets to the end the more you can see Lucas’s life go all the way down.

Mads Mikkelsen gives a good performance of Lucas. He shows a guy that’s slowly losing himself over the movie over a false rumor. He tries to stay strong but slowly starts to go insane.

Theo, Lucas’s friend, also has a weird feeling over the movie when he struggles with protecting his daughter Klara and believing that his friend didn’t touch his daughter.

My thoughts on the film is that it’s a great movie but that it also plays with your head. Because at the end of the movie, after everything calms down for Lucas and it’s proven that he didn’t touch Klara, he gets shot at at the end of the movie. What I think that means is that nothing will ever actually go back to normal for him. At least for Lucas.

I would give ‘The Hunt (Jagten)’ a 10/10. This movie is on Prime Video and other streaming services.