"Night Hunter" Canadian Online-Dating Suspense Film Review and Thoughts

Film summary: After the online predator Simon is brought to justice, the police discover the case is not so simple and find many unreasonable points. Anyone connected to the case, whether on the side of the law or the underworld, is killed one after another.

• Film title: “Night Hunter” (Nomis / Night Hunter).
• Genre: Psychological thriller
• Running time: 98 minutes.
• Year: 2019.
• Starring: Henry Cavill, Ben Kingsley, Alexandra Daddario, Stanley Tucci.
• Director: David Raymond.
• Country of production: Canada
• Recommendation rating:

★★★★★★

“Night Hunter” (Nomis / Night Hunter)

The 2019 Canadian film “Night Hunter” is a suspense film depicting a serial kidnapping and murder case targeting a large number of girls through online dating. The film’s pacing is, well, fairly smooth, except that sometimes scenes cut in too abruptly and then disappear inexplicably, giving the impression that the director’s post-production editing is rather inconsistent.

Upon investigation, it turns out Night Hunter is actually David Raymond’s first commercial film, and he even served as both director and screenwriter, and there is not even a Wikipedia page for it — thinking about it that way, one can feel rather forgiving.

There are several supporting actors I personally quite like (the bald ones), but their performances in the film are not particularly outstanding. More accurately, even the male lead himself feels like just a cameo.

What I find harder to get used to is that all the characters’ positions are not clearly defined, and as the plot keeps moving forward, you feel that all the characters are merely walking to a certain position and doing one thing because the director assigned them a task. The only truly important thing in the film is the director; there is no real room for the characters to shine, losing a great deal of cause and effect and weakening the expressiveness of the whole story’s connections. Perhaps this is also a problem that can arise when one is both screenwriter and director.

Although this work loses quite a few points in story tension due to the above, it does indeed give the whole story a complete account. Even if the director tries to abstrusely steer the audience’s thinking toward another traditional plot, it does not make the audience go from questioning to anger (laughs), and when the truth is revealed it still gives the audience a relaxing sense of “so that’s how it was.”

So I am still willing to recommend this film. Of course, the most suitable time to watch it is on a boring weekend night with nothing to do, when you can wrap yourself in a blanket, sip a little wine and open this film. After watching you will not lose anything, nor gain anything, and there is no stress-relief effect — it is just like reading a news report. It is a passable time-killer film.