The Hunter

The Hunter is a 2011 film from Australia, more precisely Tasmania, that is taut, slow-building, and completely absorbing. Willem Dafoe gives a quiet, understated, but devastating performance as a man who changes, and it's the genius of the performance, the writing, and the direction that that change is understandable.

Directed by Daniel Nettheim and adapted from a novel by Julia Leigh, it stars Dafoe as some kind of master hunter. He's been hired by a corporation to find what may be the last Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that was thought to go extinct in 1936.

Dafoe, posing as a zoologist, bunks with a family near the wilderness. At first he just deals with the two children, because their mother (Frances O'Connor), is medicated after the disappearance of her husband, lost in the bush. Dafoe tries to stay removed from their problems, especially a conflict with logging interests, but can't help but be drawn into their lives. He also becomes more and more respectful of the animal he is tracking.

Nettheim uses the Tasmanian locations to great effect--an old guide (Sam Neill) tells Dafoe that some areas have been never been visited by man, and you can believe it. But what hovers over all of this is the tantalizing mystery of the thycaline, the Tasmanian tiger, which is one of those cryptids that people have been sighting for years but have no authentic proof of. The mystery wraps itself around this film, and I'm still haunted by some of the images, especially the last few scenes, which I won't give away here.

The Hunter is an outstanding film, and is even more of a gift to cryptozoologists, professional and amateur alike.