The Hunt is full of shady characters, but Hilary Swank as the film's big bad proves why horror needs more female villains.

The heavily controversial film is a modern retelling of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game. A group of wealthy elite hand-select a group of people that they deem as deplorables. They kidnap them, drop them in a remote field with a small stash of guns, and begin to hunt them for sport. Crystal May, who is one of the hunted, decides to fight back.

There's an entire group of wealthy elite hunting others for sport, but Hilary Swank's Athena is the mastermind. It's so surprise that she is the last one standing out of her friends. Athena keeps a close watch on Crystal over the course of the film. She's cold, calculating and highly trained — the perfect foil to Crystal. It's a fairly uncommon move in the horror genre for movies to have a female villain, but Hilary Swank proves that horror audiences need to see more of that.

The Hunt Breaks The Stereotype Of The Final Girl


Hollywood has made large strides in correcting gender stereotypes in films, but it still has a long way to go. That's why tools like the Bechdel test exist. Men still claim the vast majority of leading roles, whether it's the hero or the villain. Many roles for women are still just the spouse or damsel in distress. The horror genre is just as guilty of this as any other genre, thanks to the final girl.

This long-running element of horror movies refers to a trope often executed by slasher films. A group is stalked by a killer, who picks them off one-by-one. There is typically one innocent yet hyper-sexualized female character who lives to tell the tale. She escapes by the skin of her teeth or by pure luck. The Hunt technically has a final girl with Crystal, but it flips the final girl archetype on its head by having her face off with another woman.

With Swank playing a villain, stereotypes are thrown out the window. Her presence changes the purpose of the female protagonist. Athena has no interest in sexualizing or overpowering her prey. She views Crystal as a worthy opponent, which makes their final showdown in the film's packed ending absolutely thrilling. Not to mention that by simply being the opposite gender of many horror film villains, Athena has a different mindset and motivation than many of her male counterparts. That makes her a wildly unpredictable villain. More antagonists like The Hunt's Athena will keep the genre from becoming tired and repeating a lot of the same tropes — she's exactly what more horror movies need.