Final Rating: 3.5/5
Pack mentality is a difficult behavior to wrap your head around if you haven’t experienced it. It often has two major responses: a negative one for the lack of individuality and a positive one for the tight-knit sense of community. Annick Blanc’s Hunting Daze explores both sides of this behavior as five men spending their bachelor weekend at a cabin in the woods welcome the exotic dancer they hired to spend the remainder of the trip with them.
From the moment Nahéma Ricci’s Nina invites herself to stay with the bachelors, there’s an unsettling feeling that winds through the film. Like a character in a horror movie walking down into a dark basement, your every fiber wants to scream out, “Don’t do it!” The logistics of this decision are somewhat irrelevant as Kev (Frédéric Millaire-Zouvi) drives Nina back to the cabin, rather than to somewhere more convenient. The film rushes to put Nina in this predicament, because that’s where the film mines its theme.
Once Nina’s there, the red flags appear more frequently as she’s required to wear a blindfold while the group of men vote on whether she should be allowed to stay. Ultimately, Bruno Marcil’s Bernard, the eldest member of the group, tells her that she can stay if she agrees to “live life a wolf” and “follow the pack”. Bernard could not exude more toxic masculinity if he tried.
What follows is Blanc attempting to convince us and Nina that she’s been absorbed into the men’s inner circle. She goes through a variety of initiation activities that culminate with her and Bernard hunting together and killing a deer. The group dance to loud music and relish their newfound pack member. Everything is shot ethereally by cinematographer Vincent Gonneville. There’s a haze to the composition of the scenes and positions he places his camera that give the entire film a dash of reverie.
While Nina feels like she’s becoming part of the pack, it isn’t entirely convincing. The men tell her she’s one of them, ask her to be like them, but treat her differently relative to each other. She buys into their lifestyle during this short period of time, but it’s hard to understand why. Thankfully, her intrusion into their weekend doesn’t come across as perilous for anyone thinking about the events in films like Promising Young Woman, which certain scenarios here evoke.
Things become further complicated when Kev brings another stray human being to the party in the form of Dudos (Noubi Ndiaye). Dudos’ presence brings the partying to a crescendo as everyone does drugs and things finally spiral out of hand, like so many cinematic parties do. One of the men catches fire and another shoots Dudos with a hunting rifle.
A more seasoned filmmaker might have used this moment as a way to ground the film–a shock to the system. But Blanc doesn’t ever let go of the otherworldliness that punctuates the events of the movie. This shows itself in multiple vision sequences that are more compelling in a vacuum than they are within the context of the film. Outside of those scenes, the continued dreamlike quality of the film embellishes every character and their actions. It creates a heightened level of emotionality that serves the themes quite well.
The final act of the film is a delightful roller coaster of emotions. The true nature of the five bachelors comes to light time and time again. Nahéma Ricci’s impressive physical performance leads to another “please don’t do it” moment as well as a fabulous “you go girl” moment. Annick Blanc swings for the fences in the last fifteen minutes and may not connect every time, but hits some beautiful scenes out of the park.
The pack mentality theme reaches a fitting conclusion. Nina tries to be one of the pack, but a joking bout of gaslighting in the middle of the film is more than sufficient evidence to know that she never will be. This is accentuated by the second voting scene in the movie. What’s so fascinating about this scene is the implication that everyone involved votes for something that they don’t have any intention of doing themselves. The group moves forward with a very suspect choice, but when the deed is asked to be done, no one actually wants to do it. Blanc does such a good job of tugging at the fabric of the pack mentality and showing its fundamental flaws. Individuality will rear its head to thwart a decision made by the pack.
If there’s a major point of contention about the film’s presentation of the pack mentality, it’s that by necessity, the men in the pack must be viewed as a unit. While many of them get their moments of individualism, their characters (save for Marcil’s Bernard) are quite two-dimensional. The younger four ultimately see themselves as victims of circumstance, whereas Bernard’s outlook on everything is more confident.
With the amount of attention paid to the pack mentality theme, there are moments when the film’s narrative feels non-existent, especially in the first half. This causes the emotional core of the film to take some time to fully develop. Viewers will want to latch on to Nina from the beginning, but may struggle to connect with her even by the end.
However, the film thrives in large part thanks to Nahéma Ricci’s facial expressions. She beautifully conveys how familiar these circumstances are for Nina in the film’s many close ups. As an exotic dancer, she presumably finds herself in a space dominated by hypermasculinity frequently. The remarkable part is how Ricci never lets that familiarity cross over into comfort. Nina is not comfortable with the situation, but she can’t express that feeling or else the situation will, by all appearances, get worse.
Annick Blanc takes many risks in her first feature film. It’s no surprise that Hunting Daze was nominated for John Dunning Best First Feature at the Canadian Screen Awards. It’s a more than competent thriller that is sure to surprise any viewer at least once.
