Writers: Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines
Director: Tommy Boulding
Just in time for Halloween Hounded is a home-grown chiller based on the old theme humans are the most dangerous game to hunt.
Leon (Nobuse Jnr) runs an inner-city gang specialising in stealing rare antiques to order. He justifies his actions as the profits are put towards paying university tuition fees for his more intelligent brother Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman). Having achieved his objective Leon wants to call it a day but other gang members can’t resist one last job. Along with his brother and Vix (Hannah Traylen), an opportunist who declines zero-hour contracts preferring to be a thief than to work for one, and Tod (Ross Coles) her partner-in-crime, Leon agrees to steal a ceremonial hunting dagger not realising the commission is a trap.
In the manner of Don’t Breathe the cocky home invaders find they have bitten off more than they can chew in trying to burgle the home of the wealthy Redwick family. Matriarch Katherine Redwick (Samantha Bond) has ideas on social class that make William Rees-Mogg look moderate and believes the invasion of her home entitles her to administer her own brand of justice. Having captured the hapless gang, she gives them a chance to run for freedom while her family follow on horseback with hounds hunting them down.
Director Tommy Boulding builds tension by putting characters out of their usual environment. The opening scenes establish the gang as nocturnal – always filmed at night and comfortable in enclosed urban spaces. They are, therefore, completely out of their element stuck in bright sunlight and the open countryside. In a rare comic moment, the gang realise even if they could construct a compass and find true north, they would be no better off having no idea if their home is in the north or south.
There is the sense of things being outside the norm- violence is expected to happen in darkness not daylight-and Boulding adds to this uneasy sensation with shots of empty nurseries and bare trees. Hounded makes a virtue out of necessity. The budget restrictions which prevent the use of a full pack of hounds and huntsmen are not apparent as the hunters are intentionally restricted to the just the four homicidal members of the Redwick family.
Writers Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines limit the characterisation to the gang members. Malachi Pullar-Latchman is suitably tormented at the mess he has created, and Hannah Traylen’s defensive exterior conceals the abuse suffered by Vix. There is the tantalising hint Vix is so ruthless as to be willing to dispense with her own colleagues if her freedom is threatened.
However, although Samantha Bond fleshes out the icy Katherine Redwick into a cruelly calculating dominatrix, never doubting her twisted version of reality; the hunters remain sketchy, cartoon-like characters.
Although Hounded is effective as a horror story the opportunity to go beyond the thriller formula is not exploited. Despite featuring a secondary character who literally tugs his forelock before the privileged elite the chance for social satire does not arise. Parallels are not drawn with wider society although members of the underclass are forced to play a game where the rules favour the elite.
As Chaz is supposed to be educated to university standard one might have expected him to be able to devise some arguments to challenge the smug superiority of the Redwick family. Instead, Hannah Traylen’s Vix is the sole subversive element in particular her terse observation that, living on a council rather than a country estate, she is more accustomed to guns than the Redwick family.
Hounded is a film that knows its place; content to be an effective thriller but shying away from pretensions towards social comment.
Signature Entertainment presents Hounded on Digital Platforms 31st October.
