Hunting Season

The Exile’s Last Stand

There is a specific sub-genre of cinema that has quietly colonized the digital landscape over the last decade: the "Geezer Noir." In these films, former titans of the box office—Neeson, Willis, and now, inevitably, Mel Gibson—retreat to the wilderness to play men who are tired, forgotten, and lethal. *Hunting Season* (2025) fits this mold with almost defiant precision. Yet, to dismiss it as merely another algorithmic asset for the VOD market is to miss the fascinating, uncomfortable meta-text simmering beneath its surface. Here is Mel Gibson, Hollywood’s ultimate pariah-survivor, playing Bowdrie, a man who has rejected the civilized world to live in the woods, only to find that the world refuses to leave him alone.

Directed by Raja Collins, the film operates less like a high-octane thriller and more like a moody, claustrophobic chamber piece that occasionally remembers it needs a gunfight. Collins employs a visual language that is austere, bordering on the clinical. The cinematography is washed in the slate-greys and winter-blues of the Oklahoma wilderness, creating a visual suffocation that mirrors Bowdrie’s self-imposed isolation. This is not the glossy, frantic action of the *Lethal Weapon* days; it is the visual equivalent of a stiff joint on a cold morning.

However, Collins often mistakes lethargy for tension. The film’s "slow burn" approach frequently feels like a stalling tactic, a narrative holding pattern designed to stretch a thin premise—reclusive dad and daughter save a wounded stranger, bad guys follow—to feature length. The silence of the woods is meant to be pregnant with dread, but too often, it is simply empty.

What saves the film from collapsing into its own quietude is the undeniable, ferocious gravity of its star. Gibson, with a beard that looks like it was woven from steel wool and regret, anchors the film with a performance of startling physicality. He is not phoning this in. In the film’s most discussed sequence—the "Lawnmower Interrogation"—we see a flash of the "Mad Mel" persona that made him a superstar. Threatening a cartel henchman with a running blade inches from his face, Gibson summons a manic, terrifying glee that transcends the generic script. It is a moment of pure, kinetic cinema that reminds us that while the vessel may be aged, the engine is still dangerously overpowered.

The emotional core, however, lies in the friction between Bowdrie and his daughter, Tag (Sofia Hublitz). Hublitz provides a necessary counterweight to Gibson’s granite stoicism, playing Tag not as a helpless child but as a survivalist-in-training who is beginning to question the necessity of their exile. Their dynamic turns the film into a parable about protectionism. Bowdrie isn’t just protecting Tag from the cartel; he is protecting her from the "corruption" of the outside world—a world that, perhaps, he feels rejected by.

Ultimately, *Hunting Season* is a competent, if uneven, thriller that relies too heavily on the baggage its star brings to the screen. It doesn't reinvent the wheel; it barely spins it. But as a cultural artifact, it is compelling. It is a portrait of an actor who, like his character, has retreated to the fringes, waiting for the fight to come to him, proving that even in the winter of a career, he can still draw blood.