Watch The Wild Hunt For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Blistering performances.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I enjoyed playing AD&D when I was in elementary and middle school as a way of escaping and playing fantasy. And so this movie is a little too much. I'm pretty sure what it's trying to say for folk to get back into reality and the world around them despite all it's depressing elements, but although it has some comedy and originality, the movie is inane at it's core. It carries a lot of the same patterns and themes as the German movie "Das Experiment", but it is not as defined and goes over-the-top with some of it's characters within characters. The older brother even by the end of the movie has not learned to come back to reality. Maybe this movie's for those who do role-playing, but for those have never done it, it will have little meaning and be a charade worse than a bad Shakespeare festival.

The problem with current cinema in a nutshell: it is considered cool and edgy for movie characters to be constantly irritated, annoyed, offensive and swearing. The problem with this movie in particular: people who engage in live role-playing do so because it's fun. They don't go around constantly using f-words and c-words and taking things too seriously and not seriously enough at the same time, as shown in this movie (I am not a live role-player, but I have friends who are). "Artistic license" it may be, but that doesn't stop it from also being a betrayal of what live role-playing is really like. Yes, a betrayal: some audiences, not knowing how distant this portrayal of it is from the real thing, will be scared away from live role-playing by this movie. It's all but saying that role-playing will lead to uncontrollable violence - a repetition of ignorant, conservative, long out-of-date fears about young people's love for comics, video games and role-playing.I realize the story is trying to take things to a different level; speculating about minor conflicts getting out of hand and turning into deadly serious major ones, and that's fine. There are many good ideas here and very nice directing, but in my view it should have been handled very differently. It just never feels like something that could happen, or like a good representation of live role-playing. Many plot developments seem contrived (like Lyn suddenly getting sick, and the car that won't start), and the way most of the characters hate each other is completely contrary to real live role-playing situations, even though the latter certainly has its share of intrigues and internal politics. But in this movie the characters (esp. Shaman Murtagh) are just not believable. They range from too angry and obnoxious to nastily self-ridiculing. The story itself goes into such extremes that we are asked to suspend our disbelief beyond any bounds of credibility. I wonder which audience this is made for. Is it an attempt to thematize the danger of fantasy being confused with reality? Or is it just an excuse to escalate the pretend-violence into real violence? I, for one, don't think it works.Of course, I'm judging this from how similar it is to real live role-playing. Maybe the writer and director didn't care about that, but wanted to do something different. All right. But people involved in live role-playing are the ones who will mainly and mostly want to see this movie, and therefore one might argue that it ought to be truer to their experience. If the writer and director achieved what they set out to do, good for them. For me, however, this was a disappointment and in bad taste. It should either have been more tasteful (some may not be aware of it, but great drama *is* possible without copious profanity, as any student of literature will know) or much more like a comedy. After all, live role-playing is about fun. This movie undermines and takes away that fun. Maybe it would be an interesting and innovative movie if there already existed twenty movies done in the proper spirit, but since there doesn't, this is not what people who understand live role-playing is looking for.For those like me who may have been disappointed with this movie, I recommend watching All's Faire In Love instead. A similar idea, but done as a comedy, and a very effectively entertaining one.5 out of 10.

Larpers (more properly L.A.R.P.ers, i.e. Live-Action Role Players, i.e. folks that dress up like goblins and wizards and engage in foam-sword combat in the woods) have been one side of a cinematic love affair, of late. Documentaries like Darkon and Monster Camp try and peel back the fake fur and face paint to see the real people beneath, while comedies like Role Models see in the admittedly nerdy hobby a wellspring of both laughs and weirdly noble self-realization.In director Alexandre Franchi's debut film The Wild Hunt, larping is something altogether more serious, and much more sinister. Erik Magnusson (Ricky Mabe), a Canadian born to an Icelandic father whom he now reluctantly cares for, is bothered by repeated dreams of a banging door and the sound of his girlfriend Evelyn (Tiio Horn) crying out in fear. Evelyn has left him for the weekend, to role play a princess in Erik's older brother Bjorn's larp-group, a viking and troll setting Bjorn (Mark A. Krupa) has all but disappeared into. To win her back, Erik must navigate the confusing, threatening larp world, where he discovers that some of the players aren't just escaping workaday responsibilities but are instead building a framework to work out some of their darker, more violent fantasies.It's an enjoyable film, troubled by a difficult script. On the one hand it's enjoyably novel: setting a murder-and-revenge story amongst the assumedly meek, awkward foam-sword and teva-sandals crowd is an entertaining twist, and Franchi, helped enormously by good Gothic set dec and often beautiful cinematography by Claudine Sauvé is able to wring surprisingly high drama out of the whole thing. On the other hand, in building up to the grand guignol finale the film strains and struggles, testing credulity both in terms of character motivation and in terms of basic emotional mathematics: it's hard at points to understand why Erik doesn't just dismiss the whole mess and go home. That said, there's rather more of the former dark beauty than the latter character weirdness, and the film (especially as a Canadian film artifact) is massively enjoyable on its merits, of which there are plenty. Missteps along a very original path are easily excused. 8/10

OK, there is a little bit of violence, and OK, it may need some serious thinking to understand what is happening. BUT this must easily be the best thought-of plot, the most realistic romantic story, and a great description of human nature with an unbelievable ending. There was comedy, a build up of emotions, acting to be proud of and an explosion of emotion through out the movie. Definitely not for the faint of heart, or those looking to waste a couple of hours of their lives. But more for those looking to see our own humanity, what love would do to us, the abyss of desperation and the true meaning of chivalry.