“The Hunting Ground,” a documentary shocker about rape on American college campuses, goes right for the gut. A blunt instrument of a movie, it derives its power largely from the many young women and some men recounting on camera how they were raped at their schools and then subsequently denied justice by those same schools. Their stories — delivered in sorrow and rage, with misting eyes and squared jaws — make this imperfect movie a must-watch work of cine-activism, one that should be seen by anyone headed to college and by those already on campus.
The movie arrives in the midst of a vigorous, sometimes furious and at times crudely simplistic national discussion about sexual assault. Fueling that discussion is the Obama administration, which has made the issue a priority. In 2014, the White House released guidelines on how campus rapes are to be treated. In a move that continues to make waves, it also released the names of 55 schools — from Harvard College to the University of California, Berkeley — that were under investigation by the Department of Education for their handling (or mishandling) of rape accusations. At issue is whether they violated federal laws under Title IX, which bans gender discrimination at colleges receiving federal money.
