‘Hunters’ pilot episode review
By Lauren Paulsen, Senior Columnist
2/5
What if there was a group of terrorists who weren’t human? The new television series, Hunters, explores this idea. Based on a novel called “Alien Hunters” by Whitley Strieber, Hunters is a new crime drama with a sci-fi twist.
FBI agent Flynn (Nathan Phillips) is thrust into a new world when his wife Abby (Laura Gordon) is abducted by strange creatures. On the outside, they look human, but inside, they are not. No one knows where they are from, or what they want, just that they must be stopped. A secret task force is assigned to protect the public from these Hunters. Flynn is recruited by them and together they try to figure out why the Hunters are so interested in Abby.
Everyone on this show seems to have secrets. Flynn is suffering from post-traumatic stress and recurrent flashbacks that seem to indicate that he has come into contact with the Hunters before. His partner died at that time, so he and Abby took in his partner’s daughter, Emme (Shannon Berry), who has quite a few issues herself.
Regan (Britne Oldford), one of the special agents on the Hunter task force, appears to have a connection to the Hunters—something alluded to in the first episode, but is actually revealed in the trailer—and then there’s Abby, seemingly just an ordinary piano teacher, yet of great interest to the Hunters.
Unfortunately for the show, it feels like it is trying too hard. Hardly anything is explained in the pilot episode, and even if we learn more later on, the plot will likely drag on with this vague idea of these Hunters being a threat to humanity. A lot of the plot is too ambiguous to really hold your attention.
The characters also fall flat, unfortunately. Attempts are made to catch our interest through all of these secrets, but the characters just appear two-dimensional. It’s hard to really empathize with them.
Visually, the episode can be quite annoying, as a lot of the time the lighting is quite poor, making it difficult to see what is going on, and the special effects are poor, making the show look cheap. One of the most annoying things about the show is the constant clicking noises made whenever the camera focused on a Hunter. It was obviously meant to let us know that the Hunters aren’t human, but the noise was used so excessively that it almost became torture to listen to. There is also one particular song that the Hunters seem obsessed with, so it was also played to the point of overuse.
Overall, the pilot for Hunters was pretty underwhelming and seemed to drag on forever. If the subsequent episodes follow the same path, the show won’t be worth watching. Unless something exciting happens, or the characters develop more in the second episode, most people will probably drop Hunters soon if they haven’t decided to already. It’s really going to have to work hard to pick itself up off the floor.
