DarrlaReviews
Hunted/Hounded (2022)
Samantha Bond has her home broken into by roadmen but thanks to Larry Lamb she knows what’s about to happen.
British horror in case you couldn’t tell.
If you aren’t British then this should be a decent insight into the class division that exists here.
For a low budget British horror this is beyond all measure of good, it’s rather devoid of the pretentious, arty trappings of most British horror and that’s no bad thing.
The roadmen (it’s a slightly more nuanced version of plain old Chav) are not good people, I mean, they’re burglars but they’re like the two nicer ones from Don’t Breathe.
They go in to pre-selected houses and rob them on the advice of a local antique dealer, the poor robbing the rich rather than robbing some old lady on their estate of her pension as she comes back from Tesco local.
Leon and Chas are brothers, Leon is only doing the burglaries to fund college for younger brother Chas, who fills the role of getaway driver. They are aided by their friends, Vix and Tod.
As they enter the antique shop, Samantha Bond (British TV royalty and Pierce Brosnan era Moneypenny) is there and having a dagger evaluated. Once she leaves, the antique dealer passes her address to our intrepid heroes and instructions to steal the dagger.
They then break in not knowing they’re expected by Moneypenny who’s accompanied by her father who is Randyll Tarly from GOT, her brother who is Ben from I’m Alan Partridge and her nephew who’s IMDb is empty but he’s young.
If you like humans hunting humans movies, were ever curious about British classism, want to see what British bluebloods have done or would do more openly if they could then watch this as it’s really good. I was not expecting it to be so well acted, written or nuanced but this is a fine example of British horror and goes far beyond what you would expect from the simple premise. With levels and depth and subtext and good pacing which I find to be a problem in modern movies.