Macabre…ish Horror Review: Hunt Her, Kill Her
Hunt Her, Kill Her, 2023/ 1 hr 28 min
At a furniture factory, janitor, Karen (Natalie Terrazzino), is waiting to start her new job. Glenn (Larry Bunton), her day shift counter part, shows her around and explains what her job entails.
Glenn leaves and the building is supposed to be empty but Mickey and Rusty (Scott Lane), old buddies of her ex husband, Danny (JC Oakley III). Mickey (Trevor Tucker) is oddly angry about their divorce and antagonizes her. They leave and Karen locks the door behind them. She shuts down the rest of the place and gets to work.
Later, while taking the trash out, she notices a truck parked out in the parking lot. Karen is spooked and her terrible babysitter, Tina (Georgia Kate Haege), is calling, she can’t get Lily (Olivia Graves) to stop crying.
After lunch, someone starts beating on the door, a delivery man drops off a package but it seems off. After getting back to work, Karen hears a door opening and tools moving around. She checks it out and she chases someone but all she can see are doors closing behind him.
Karen returns to the package and opens it, inside is their door stop. Suddenly she knows she’s in danger, she looks up and sees four armed, masked men walking toward her. They chase her down and when she tries to leave through an external door, she finds that they’ve chained it shut. She runs and closes a bay door behind her and they pry their way through. So Karen hides while she thinks.
The men are combing through the place searching for her and she barely gets under an internal door to escape, she is cut and stabs one of them in return. Again she hides and they intruders disconnect the phone and get weapons to use on her.
She hangs from a platform and though they can’t see her, one of them stands on one of her hands. She gets lucky and falls just out of their eye sight. While they can’t find her, they’re going through the building, cutting the phone lines and searching for the breaker. And because they are struggling to find her they begin to shout out threats to torture her longer, unless she comes out.
Karen gets an idea to use grease to try to squeeze out of an external door but one of them catch her pulls her back in. She fights back and escapes. But he’s on her heels as she crawls through racks and hides again. He finally catches her, dragging her toward him by a strap and hook that’s tied around her ankle but once Karen untangles herself, he falls backward, down a flight of stairs, striking concrete with his head. She looks under his mask and recognizes his face, it’s the guy who delivered the package. His name is Eddie.
She puts him on the pallet jack and deploys it. That’s how the other’s find out Eddie (Phillip Zimny) is dead.
Once again she hides until they find her when her blood drips on a drum, so she runs for it, and loses Eddie’s knife. Her hiding game is next level, even when she’s near them, they can’t find her. She eventually finds bolt cutters and try to cut a chain but once again she’s caught, but this time from outside. The guy takes the bolt cutters right out of her hand. So she hides in a bathroom. One of the intruders break in and cuts her good but he gets a broken plunger handle in the chest for his trouble and bathroom cleaner in the face. That’s two dead. This one is named Bobby (Reece Griffin).
Karen sustains a deep cut from him but at least she has his knife. She sneaks away to the stairwell and makes it to the lunchroom and nurses her wounds. It’s not long before the intruders, including Vic (Stephen Polson) who’s supposed to be keeping watch outside, enter the lunchroom. Karen retreats under a table.
When they finally leave to check the offices, that they have keys for, she sets up a trap and uses herself for bait. One of the intruders chase and run right into it. It’s a spool of wire, stretched across a two racks, at neck level. He bleeds out at the neck and she helps it along, pushing on his back as he lays on the ground. Afterward, she dresses in his clothes and mask and works on luring the last one out.
In the meantime, she has the keys and is searching for a door out. Just as the door opens and she gets out, so does the fourth intruder. Karen fights for her life. With an extension cord and a pipe, she kills him. This one is Mickey. She grabs his cell phone and notices Danny calling. But he’s not just calling, he’s there. Karen takes off back inside the building. He corners her and beats her up. And it’s bad. He takes pleasure in hurting her.
Suddenly, Lily is standing right in front of them, as Karen’s being pummeled, calling out to her. Danny grabs Lily and runs off. Karen runs after them. Danny locks Lily in an office and returns but Karen is not waiting. She has a plan. She runs around turning on machines and while he turns them off behind her. Karen is busy mixing chemicals, and Danny promises to kill her quick like he did, Tina.
Karen executes her plan, she traps him in a room with a little homemade mustard gas. But wait, there’s more, while he’s coughing and trying to escape, she tapes a hammer to one of her broken hands and goes in for more.
It seems scorched lungs and a hammer buried in the back of his head isn’t enough. While trying to choke her to death, she pries the hammer out of his skull and goes to work on this abusive monster. And she doesn’t stop until he stops moving.
When she and Lily open the door outside, the sun’s up.
This film was directed by Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen and this is a little bit on a slow burn. Lots of running and hiding but the violence is pretty graphic. The violence definitely builds as the movie goes on and the most violence is saved for last. I really appreciate that Karen was a fighter and not just a victim.