I believe this experience happened and served as the inspiration for this film. He recounted the story with no apparent performance. And yes, it’s possible that this story could be marketing hype. Sure, this guy is an actor with an impressive resume (you’ve seen and probably loved many films he’s appeared in). He never saw her, but he sure could hear her! Stewart sits in front of the camera and tells a tale of something he experienced (many times while living in a certain place in West Virginia), when a screaming, ghostly woman would wail at night outside his house. One short 10- or 15-minute segment is the story behind the ghost. After I watched the film, I checked out the special features on the DVD. Writer-director Josh Stewart is actually from West Virginia, and this movie was set and filmed in West Virginia. So, now let’s return to the “Based on Actual Events” aspect of this film. Her screams are truly - no exaggeration whatsoever - the scariest screams I’ve ever heard in a Horror film! I watched this movie in the daytime in my car during my lunch break, and I was genuinely scared! We don’t even see the ghost! We only hear her, and her screams are terrifying to me. Those sounds are very upsetting, indeed.īut to me what makes this film truly work is, first and foremost, the incredible vocal performance of Katherine Von Till, who plays the ghost. And I have heard blood-curdling animal screams (such as when raccoons are fighting in the darkness of the woods) that are intensely creepy. Sure, I have some personal, subjective experience that I’m bringing to the table: For instance, I’m from West Virginia, and I’ve spent some time hiking through the woods at night. I’m betting most Horror fans will be underwhelmed - and perhaps even bored - by “The Hunted.” But to me, I found this film to be unsettling and haunting. Even Roger Ebert listed “The Blair Witch Project” among his “10 Most Influential Films of the Century”!) So, I’m not trying to take anything away from “The Blair Witch Project,” especially since it probably informed “The Hunted.” But 14 years later, we have a film that works even better to me. (Yes, co-directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick created a historically significant Horror film. So, what you have here is a Found Footage film that’s in the vein of “The Blair Witch Project” (1999), but even better for my money. Is it an injured bobcat? Or is it a wailing ghost woman? Jake’s plan is to shoot a decent proof-of-concept, pilot episode that he hopes to sell to investors and a network.īut the two TV hosts become increasingly concerned when they keep hearing blood-curdling (and I mean blood-curdling) screams in the darkness of the woods. I’ll come back to this story at the end of the review, but here’s the premise of the movie: Jake (Josh Stewart) is trying to launch a hunting reality TV show, so he travels to the woods of West Virginia with his camera man (Ronnie Gene Blevins) and tries to bag a large buck that’s been eluding hunters. Writer-director (and star) Josh Stewart was inspired by actual events that he experienced to write “The Hunted” (2013). We’ve learned over the decades that this typically means there is a kernel of truth that inspired the story. When a film opens with the phrase, “Based on Actual Events” or something of the like, you can usually dismiss it altogether.
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