Movie review - Hunt Her, Kill Her

Hunt Her, Kill Her ** (out of 5) (NR) There have been dozens of films in which an innocent woman is forced to summon previously untapped toughness and resourcefulness to fend off a group of assailants. An early example is a blind Audrey Hepburn whose home is invaded by thugs mistakenly thinking some drugs were stashed there in Wait Until Dark. Among the grittier, bloodier explorations of the premise, 1978’s I Spit on Your Grave spawned a slew of sequels and imitators, including its next-generation return bout, I Spit on Your Grave: Déjà Vu in 2019.

In this case, Natalie Terrazzino plays a woman on her first night as the janitor in a large industrial facility. She’s worried about her sick child left in the care of a neighbor. She starts hearing sounds that are troubling, since she’s supposed to be the only one there for the whole night. She soon finds herself under attack by a handful of masked intruders, with no idea who they are, or why they’re after her. Is she just unlucky enough to be in the way of a heist? Are they using the premises for some criminal enterprise? Or could she be the target? Her life depends on defeating them, no matter which motive is driving their lethal engines.

What ensues is a typically unlikely set of dodges, defenses and counterattacks throughout the large, labyrinthine building. This plain, mild-mannered woman must become the Die Hard version of Bruce Willis, with a touch of MacGyver, to survive the night. What happens isn’t all that surprising. These flicks are all about the methods by which the woman survives. Ruby Rose headlined something similar in 2020’s The Doorman, though that one established her character’s trained fighting skills up front. Terrazzino appears far less qualified for this unexpected survival struggle.

Fans of gorefests will find plenty of ickiness in the proceedings. The whole ordeal is about as disorienting for the audience as the star, since we never get a full sense of the size, configuration and contents of the premises as she frantically scrambles to hide, set traps and fend off the attackers. Nothing special about her or the mostly-anonymous assailants. Or the plot. This one just scratches a particular cinematic itch of tables being rightly turned by an underdog in the bloodiest of displays.

(Hunt Her, Kill Her opens in theaters on 3/3/23; available on multiple Video On Demand platforms as of 4/14/23)