‘The Hunt’ Review: Benoît Magimel Anchors a Tense Tale of Retaliation (Apple TV)
After a hunting trip turns into a deadly shootout, four friends who choose to stay silent find themselves targeted for revenge — as violence begins to unravel their families and their lives.
Adapted from an American novel by Douglas Fairbairn — which was already turned into a 1976 film, both book and movie titled Shoot — The Hunt relocates the story to France, transplanting it into a culture and social ecosystem quite different from the original. That shift is felt throughout the series, which tries to graft America’s rural gun culture and its cycle of violence onto a setting with a very different iconography. The French have a long and often successful tradition of adapting American novels to their own terrain, but here the effort to make everything feel “universal” is sometimes too visible.
That may be the central issue with The Hunt, Apple TV’s six-episode thriller that was originally slated to premiere in December but was pushed to March following plagiarism allegations. The show was accused of copying Shoot, and judging by the way it now openly credits that source, it’s clear some acknowledgment became unavoidable. A quick glance at the novel’s synopsis makes it obvious: the inciting premise isn’t just similar — it’s identical. From there, the series branches out in different directions, but conceptually they’re telling the same story: a world where violence begets violence, and where the presence of guns does little to preserve peace — in fact, quite the opposite.
The story kicks off when Franck (the excellent Benoît Magimel, now fully settled into the grizzled, weathered phase of his career) is out hunting in a forest near the rural town where he lives with a group of friends. As they struggle to take down a deer, they suddenly come under fire. This isn’t an accident or a case of bad aim — someone is deliberately targeting them. Franck and his friends (played by Damien Bonnard, Manuel Guillot, and Cédric Appietto) take cover and shoot back. In the exchange, they kill one of their unseen attackers. But because they flee the scene and choose not to go to the authorities, they’re left with more questions than answers about what actually happened.
Unsurprisingly, none of them can simply move on. When news reports confirm that someone has died in the forest, they begin digging into who the victim might have been and what kind of connections he had. Some worry about possible repercussions — and judging by the look of the people who may have been linked to the dead man, that concern is justified. Franck, especially, is convinced there will be consequences. He’s right. Bullets left in his mailbox, an animal’s severed head placed at his door, and a tracking device attached to his car make it clear: the four men need to brace themselves for some kind of revenge.
From there, the series widens its scope, pulling in the families — particularly Franck’s: his wife, Dr. Krystel (actress and filmmaker Mélanie Laurent), and their two children, who — as so often happens in crime dramas — are perpetually one bad decision away from making everything worse. The 16-year-old daughter is dating a volatile biker; the younger son overhears things he shouldn’t and begins behaving in unsettling ways. The same dynamic plays out in the other households: each man’s life, already fraying, starts to unravel further under the pressure.
The Hunt leans into chases, suspicion, and a cat-and-mouse dynamic between Franck, his increasingly rattled friends, and the shadowy figures targeting them. The mystery of who these “rivals” are — and what initially motivated the attack — gradually expands, widening the circle of potential suspects. As a result, nearly every interaction carries a charge. Tension hums through scenes involving Franck, his wife, their children, their friends, and virtually anyone who crosses their path.
Narratively, the series moves efficiently within the conventions of contemporary crime television. Yet it’s hard to shake the odd feeling created by the relocation. The world it depicts — people stockpiling weapons at home, gathering in bars to drink beer and shoot pool, constantly driving everywhere, surrounded by menacing-looking figures — feels slightly out of joint in its French setting, as if the imagery belongs to an American thriller. Presumably, there are armed hunters in France who operate within similar codes, but the mimicry is noticeable. There is, however, one significant detail about Franck’s life — best left unspoiled — that feels unmistakably French.
At six episodes, the show remains tight and focused. It generally balances suspense and violence with a reasonable degree of character shading, particularly in the arcs of Franck, Krystel, and the character played by the ever-reliable Bonnard, a fixture of contemporary French cinema. Where it falters is in the overly predictable subplots involving the children. Using kids and teenagers as convenient tension multipliers — having them stumble into trouble simply to complicate the main plot — has become an exhausted trope in crime series. It’s a narrative shortcut that feels increasingly stale, and one the genre would benefit from retiring for a while.
