I watched this film on Hulu+ and based on the cover imagery and the byline, I expected much more drama and intrigue. The byline reads "It was going to be the best weekend of their lives until one of them disappeared..." As an avid outdoorsman, I looked forward to a film based on hunting traditions, the great outdoors and all that goes along with that. Unfortunately, I got a film that was rife with plot inconsistencies, scene goofs and other content that offends the intelligence of the viewer.
For example, when the guys were preparing for their hunt, they carried one small duffle bag each and the bags seemed to be very light. A three day deer hunting trip requires more than just a light duffle of gear, especially in the Minnesota woods. When they arrived at the cabin, some scenes had several inches of snow on the ground. Then moments later, there was no sign of snow. Snow does not melt that fast in late fall in Minnesota. On the first day, the scene at the cabin went from deep snow to no trace of snow to deep snow within a matter of minutes.
The other major inconsistency was with the fictional town of Renaissance, Minnesota. This was to be a slow paced town with population 700 where one murder committed years ago was an outlier. Now, suddenly, at least four killings occur for no apparent reason. The only provoked killing was when one of them was tricked into a revenge murder.
The sheriff is one of the most confusing characters of all. Apparently she hates the town of Renaissance and she only moved there and took the sheriff's position in order to be in her husband's home town where she has no family or friends. However, her husband died 18 months ago but she just took the job days ago, moving in from fast paced New York. If her husband is dead and she has no family or friends and she hates the town, why did she go there? She is there ostensibly to escape the occupational hazard of violence and gruesome murders.
Apparently nobody locks their door in this town. The fourth hunter showed up at the cabin when the other three guys thought he was still in Chicago. He was already inside the cabin when they arrived although he had not communicated with them about his arrival. When they went searching for the "lost" hunter, one of them simply opened up the front door of a person who allegedly killed his own father some years prior.
There is plenty of violence in this small town of 700 in Minnesota. We are given a perfunctory bar fight which was not convincingly choreographed, along with plenty of drinking. And yes, there must always be at least one drug addict in the group.
If you can accept melodramatic acting, forced dialog and plot inconsistencies, you will still long for some redeeming entertainment value from this film. For a moment, it appeared that romantic interest was developing between the sheriff and the cabin owner but this was immediately nixed for some reason. A romantic element could have helped the weak plot development. Certainly time could have been allotted since the film is hardly feature length at 76 minutes.
There are a lot of hints at character development in this film but in almost every case, the initial impetus fizzled out somewhere in the first 20 minutes of the film. Apparently, the other three hunters don't know the fourth at all, although they have been friends since childhood.
Finally, viewers who choose to finish this film are punished by seeing the most decent person in the movie tricked by a psychopath into murdering an innocent man. We are led to believe that the film portrayed four long-time friends on an annual hunting trip that results in one of them being lost. This scenario had the potential for a very good plot. However, the actual film is something else altogether.
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