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This year’s SXSW features two genre-adjacent psychological thrillers about the dangers of toxic masculinity with the backdrop of a bachelor party. The first, Birdeater from Australian directors Jim Weir and Jack Clark, is a venomous critique of manipulative men and how their friends enable their repulsive behavior, especially when it comes to respecting their partners. Then, there’s Annick Blanc’s feature film debut Hunting Daze, which interrogates the complexities of toxic male relationships through the eyes of a strong-willed and determined sex worker trying to survive. Blanc creates an uncomfortable yet hilarious world that’s constantly working to unsettle the viewer.
After finishing a job with her three colleagues at a bachelor party in middle-of-nowhere Canada, sex worker Nina (Nahéma Ricci) finds herself stranded with her group on the side of the road, their car out of gas. Their customer graciously drives them some fuel, and, after an argument with her pimp, Nina abandons the group and persuades the customer to bring her back to his hunting cabin as a favor. The sex worker, who was hired to entertain a group of men at a bachelor party, is re-entering the lion’s den, but on much different terms.
As she reintroduces herself back to the men as an equal rather than a commodity, they circle her like a pack of wolves. Each man takes turns picking at her, sizing her up with their eyes, and trying to get her to crack. But Nina wants nothing more than to survive, and these men, to put it bluntly, ain’t shit to her. She integrates herself into the pack, a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
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Despite the initial threats, the group appears ultimately harmless as their initiation rituals involve egg races and shooting targets. There’s this inherent threat of sexual violence that Blanc immediately obliterates as the tone suddenly switches to jovial and almost innocent. And that’s what I mean when I say this is a film that wants to destabilize its audience. Blanc is constantly shifting tones to keep you from ever really deciding if these guys are good or bad; Blanc wants the viewer to exist in the gray area. These are men who may have decent intentions, but their own desires for power overpower any impulses of empathy or introspection. They’re a special kind of monster, one that hides in plain sight and may never show its real face until truly threatened.
In Hunting Daze, that threat is the unsuspecting stranger (Noubi Ndiaye) who can’t speak French and is just trying to sell them some weird drugs. However, he’s forcibly brought into the pack, despite their inability to communicate. His appearance tips the scales and Nina quickly realizes the danger both of them are in as the five white men’s capacity for outsiders is stretched to the limit. Soon, Nina realizes the power dynamics at hand and tries to negotiate through this masculine micro-society to survive the weekend.
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Ricci as Nina is a formidable force of nature even though she stands short among the group of men. Her performance always keeps you questioning if she’s acting or if she’s getting a case of Stockholm Syndrome. The scene where the men circle her is particularly striking as she stares unblinking at them, never shrinking back as they get in her face and practically beg her to step down. But Ricci holds her own, never letting them see her as just a sex worker to pity.
While most of the script is taut and uncomfortable, it becomes too overwrought in the third act with the introduction of the stranger. While his inclusion is meant to equal the playing field for Nina and illustrate white men’s fear of the Other, it also overcomplicates an already-tight story. Hunting Daze never quite collapses under its own weight, but it struggles at times to make the same point in too many different ways.
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Set in a luxe hunting cabin in the middle of the woods, the entire vibe feels like a demented Never Land where the Lost Boys shoot guns and chug liquor for a weekend to pretend they don’t have lives, wives, jobs, and children. While it’s a mostly grounded film, Blanc injects enough of a drug-induced haze to make parts of the film feel like they take place in a dream. The boundary between real and hallucination only thins with each passing hour and Blanc’s assured direction keeps you guessing yet intrigued about what hell the group will unleash next.
Hunting Daze is the weird interrogation of gender and power dynamics that I didn’t know I needed. It’s uncomfortable, funny, disturbing, and an important step to a more nuanced understanding of the dangers women and minorities constantly face in the world. Blanc’s film is uncomfortable, funny, and nauseating all in the same breath, which will no doubt turn some viewers off. But this reinterpretation of the bachelor party film is perfect for those hungry for a nightmarish, hazy survival thriller about a sex worker facing down against a group of men who see her as a pet. Blanc shatters stereotypes of the sex worker as mere fodder for angry men to craft a bold and important narrative about gendered power dynamics and what it means to survive in this contemporary patriarchal world.
Summary
Annick Blanc’s Hunting Daze is uncomfortable, funny, and nauseating all in the same breath, a much-needed inversion of the misogynistic bachelor party film.
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