Critic Reviews

Mikkelsen, who is not given to sympathetic roles, has never been better. This is cinema that sinks its claws into your back.

An outstanding lead performance by Mads Mikkelsen (who won best actor for the role at Cannes in 2012) anchors this hauntingly layered and nuanced drama of a man falsely accused of a terrible deed.

For anyone with even a halfway developed sense of justice The Hunt may prove stressful, frustrating, even enraging, but it’s also an unbelievably effective watch, that, if nothing else signals an undeniable return to form for Vinterberg, and yet another blistering performance from Mikkelsen. See it, if only for the debates it will cause afterward.

Propelled by Mads Mikkelsen’s shattering performance as the blameless man whose life threatens to be destroyed, the film is superbly acted by a cast that never strikes a false note or softens the impact with consolatory sentiment.

This is filmmaking of a high order, even though the production's scale is modest and the climax is not without its facile contrivances.

It’s a pretty conventional “Lifetime Original Movie” sort of story. But co-writer/director Thomas Vinterberg (“Dear Wendy”) makes it work by building a sense of frustrating unease into it all.

Thomas Vinterberg (“The Celebration”) directs with restraint that makes the story all the more affecting.

Vinterberg has created a modern horror story about a man’s descent into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

The director makes clear that everyone means well — the headmistress, protective of her students; the parents, trying to shield children from things they shouldn't know about just yet; the investigators asking questions carefully, trying to see their way through ambiguous answers.

It is forthright, powerful, composed and directed with clarity and overwhelming force, yet capable of great subtlety and nuance.