FRIDAY,MARCH13,2020| THEGLOBEANDMAILO A
E
ach day the notifications on my phone built
a vignette of impending doom: devastating
natural disasters, rising geopolitical ten-
sions, even a slap-happy Pope. The dystopia
that the news presented felt at odds with the quiet
world I observed on my commuter train, an hour-
long ride from the suburbs to my downtown Toron-
to office, where the greatest tragedy I witnessed was
a man eating hard-boiled eggs from a Ziploc bag.
Though the Greater Toronto Area feels far from the
world’s fault lines and missiles and agitated Papal
hands, I wondered how long we could stay immune
to global catastrophe.
I received an answer the following Sunday at 7:
a.m., when a public alert appeared on my phone –
that there had been an incident at the Pickering Nu-
clear Generating Station. An incident, you say? And
so began the most exciting 42 minutes of my 20s.
I’m a 25-year-old man with a good job, a nice boy-
friend and a lifetime ahead of me. I live in one of the
mostpeaceful,desirablecitiesintheworld,growing
ever more desirable against an age of global unrest.
I’ve watched enough of the HBO seriesChernobylto
know that a nuclear incident means
bad news. I know that I shouldn’t
have been excited, but I was.
I moved back to Toronto after uni-
versity three years ago to start my
adult life. I did most things right: I
studied hard, went to a fancy business
school and landed a stable job. I go to
bed early, wear sunscreen every day
and occasionally floss. I live with my
parents to build a nest egg, which, I
constantly have to remind myself, is
an extreme privilege. “You live like a
king here,” my dad tells me, referring
to the stocked fridge. But, as we
learned recently from Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle, the benefits of
living like royalty do not outweigh an
adult’s need for a little space.
There is something unsettling about living
trapped in the amber of your childhood bedroom,
about watching your forehead become lined and
your hairline recede from a mirror where you once
picked pizza out of your braces. At night, I tuck my-
self into a frilly white hand-me-down bed, a bed
that my sister outgrew as a tween and a bed that I’ll
never grow into. I hate that bed frame more than
anything else, but redecorating my room feels like a
commitment to stay in it for life. “You’re just a late
bloomer,” my dad says.
My commute gives me plenty of time to day-
dream about my eventual escape. I browse Real-
tor.ca, beginning in the downtown core and nego-
tiating myself out to the suburbs where I grew up. I
eventually resign to filtering listings by “Low to
High.” Still nothing, and the rental market is just as
bleak. Even after downsizing my dreams several
times, from a detached home, to a semi, to a town-
house, to a studio, to anywhere that has fewer thantwo generations of my family inside of it, the cost of
living outpaces my surrender. I stockpile away as
much money as I can, but when I extrapolate my
savings against the market, I learn that the exercise
is futile. Should I save toward a future I can’t afford
or just spend it all? Maybe it’s time to replace that
bed frame.
Aone-bedroom isalmostpossiblewithapartner,
provided we don’t have any kids – unless the kids
work as child actors or chimney sweeps to help
make ends meet. I shudder when my co-workers
interrupt the commute small talk with commen-
tary on the cost of child care, and scratch out chil-
dren from my bucket list. I wonder how many un-
happy couples with grandfathered rents choose to
stay together, knowing that living apart in Toronto
means that they can’t afford to live at all. Maybe
that morning, like me, they woke up to the nuclear
warning and excitedly thought, “Thiswill pop the
housing bubble.”
That morning, I flung open Google Maps to see
how far my parents’ house is from ground zero: for-
ty kilometres. We had some time to pack up, but not
too much, because traffic would sure-
ly become a nightmare. It’s instinctual
for Torontonians to put small talk
about commuting above all else, even
in times of danger, and even within
the privacy of their own minds. We
love talking about our commutes at
the office: the distance, the duration,
the traffic, the crowding, the pain of
standing and the punishment of eye-
level butts when you do score a seat. I
could picture running into my neigh-
bours at packed roadside rest stops,
bragging to each other about the cru-
elty of our final commutes out of the
city between bites of burgers.
But where would I go? Montreal
seemed like a good deal, offering big-
city amenities at medium-city prices. I fleshed out
my new life out there on job-search websites and
Craigslist and Airbnb. I brainstormed introductions
that would break the tension with non-radioactive
co-workers – jokes such as, “Now I can charge my
phone just by holding it!” Hey Siri, how do you say
that in French? I googled: “How English-friendly is
Montreal?” But really, that didn’t even matter; I was
finally getting out of Toronto.
At 8:06 a.m., news broke that the nuclear “inci-
dent” was a false alarm. Good news, but I allowed
myself to marinate a little in disappointment: For
42 minutes, I had lain spread-eagle in my hideous
bed frame, staring at the popcorn ceiling, imagining
myself having a future for the first time in three
years.
IrealizedjusthowbadlyIneededachange,andif
I don’t act soon, I risk facing a meltdown well before
Pickering does.ChrisPandzalivesinRichmondHill,Ont.TORONTODIDN’T
MELTDOWN,
BUTINEARLYDID
ILLUSTRATIONBYDREWSHANNONLivingwithmyparentsinmy20sfelttiresome,butittookafalse
nuclearalarmtomakemerealizeIneededachange,ChrisPandzawritesFIRSTPERSONThereissomething
unsettlingabout
livingtrappedinthe
amberofyour
childhoodbedroom,
aboutwatchingyour
foreheadbecome
linedandyour
hairlinerecedefrom
amirrorwhereyou
oncepickedpizza
outofyourbraces.Haveastorytotell?Pleaseseetheguidelinesonourwebsitetgam.ca/essayguide,
[email protected]FirstPersonisadailypersonalpiecesubmittedbyreadersTODAY’SKENKENSOLUTIONTODAY’SSUDOKUSOLUTIONNEWS |R
emember the halcyon days when the West-
ern world was worried about the explosive
public-health danger of ... a mid-budget
movie starring Hilary Swank? Last summer,
theculturalconversationseemedtorevolve,atleast
for one early-August news cycle, around an alleged-
ly damn-near incendiary thriller calledThe Hunt.
After the film’s marketing – in which producers
pitched a black comedy about U.S. liberal elites
hunting GOP-flavoured “deplorables” for sport –
caughttheeyeofFoxNews,andthenDonaldTrump
(“Liberal Hollywood is Racist at the highest level,
and with great Anger and Hate!” the U.S. President
tweeted, displaying the sincerity of his disgust via
the use of idiosyncratic capitalization), Universal
Pictures announced that the movie would not open
Sept. 27 as planned. Cue outrage from all corners, a
good deal of it arriving with a strong whiff of manu-
facturing.
Either Universal decided that Trump’s MAGA
acolytes have short memories (hmm), that the po-
litical winds have shifted (umm) or that the entire
shuffle was an opportunity formed from crisis (a
crisitunity, perhaps) – for whatever reason, the air is
now clear forThe Huntto finally hit theatres just as
the world is becoming distracted by something ac-
tually deserving of the worry.
So: Was it all worth the fuss?
Of course not. What movie from the house of
genre megaproducer Jason Blum (Insidious,Para-
normal Activity) could be? Although that doesn’t
makedirectorCraigZobel’sfilmentirelydisposable.
Without tripping over spoilers like so many of
The Hunt’s characters stumble over land mines and
through buried spikes, I feel it is safe to report that
the film is more or less as originally pitched: A
group of ultrasensitive progressives, led by Swank’s
venture capitalist or what-have-you (the script is
never clear as to her source of superwealth), have
kidnapped an assortment of red-state stereotypes,
let them loose on a vast property in a mysterious
location,andsetabouttotrackthemlikethedogsof
America that they are. There is the tough army vet-
eran (Betty Gilpin, elevating the entire thing), the
conspiracy-theory podcaster (Ethan Suplee), the li-
ly-white Ivanka wannabe (Emma Roberts), the gun
nut (Ike Barinholtz), the other gun nut (Wayne Du-
vall) ... actually, most of the “deplorables” here are
characterized solely by their affinity for guns. Be
moreliberalwithyourimagination,youmovie-pro-
ducing snowflakes!
What follows is tremendously gory. Have you ev-
er wanted to see just how gross our eyeball sockets
can be? Good news! – but metaphorically bloodless.
There are a thousand different, subversive ways to
approachThe Hunt’s conceit – an opportunity to
mock both virtue signalling and conservative
groupthink with guts and glory – yet screenwriters
Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof take almost none of
them. With the exception of a well-placed Ava Du-
Vernay gag and one very instructive lesson on the
power of a bread knife,The Huntseems like a too-
obvious and disappointingly safe jab at Our Polar-
ized Times.
The most shocking part of this too-shocking-for-
audiences-today production is that Cuse and Linde-
lof are even involved, given the far smarter and
sharper work they did last year on HBO’sWatchmen,
whichtookthecarcassofU.S.politicsandthorough-
ly eviscerated it in a new and startling fashion.
Mostly,The Huntreminded me of what another,
far more difficult-to-pin-down filmmaker might
havedonewiththefilm’spitch.Someonelike,say,S.
Craig Zahler, whose past three genre outings (Bone
Tomahawk,Brawl in Cell Block 99and last year’s
Dragged Across Concrete), have dug into the messi-
ness of arch-conservative America with skill, if also
an unnerving sympathy and oft-nasty level of vit-
riol. Or there are the Brazilian collaborators Kleber
Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles, whose new
filmBacurau– out now in select U.S. cities, and set
foraTorontoreleaseinafewweeks–takesthehunt-
ing-humans-for-sport set-up to stranger, more in-
toxicating places.
In the meantime, for those looking for 2020’s
Most Dangerous Game, you can always watchThe
Hunt, or any film, in a crowded movie theatre this
weekend. Godspeed, America.
TheHuntopensMarch13.
MakingAmerica
goryagain
BARRYHERTZ
REVIEWTheHunt
CLASSIFICATION:R;89MINUTES
DirectedbyCraigZobel
WrittenbyNickCuseandDamonLindelof
StarringBettyGilpin,HilarySwankandIkeBarinholtz
★★½