This movie tells the story of a city slicker who fancies himself as a hunter. He has absolutely no outdoor skills whatsoever and is as clumsy as heck. With a borrowed rifle, which he has no idea how to handle and in fact handles it very dangerously, shoving a bullet into the clip that fell on the ground and got a bit muddy, he says goodbye to his wife and young family and sets off into the forest to kill a deer for the freezer.
On reaching the woods he makes his way along a trail, then through thick undergrowth. I was waiting for the moment when the fool would trip over and shoot himself in the head, but he was lucky. So far. Finally, he espied a deer quite a way away and set off in pursuit. At some point, whether by accident of design, he fired the rifle at random. Didn't get the deer. But a short while later, he stumbles upon a man lying unconscious, probably dead, on the ground, obviously shot and bleeding. Suddenly, it dawns upon our Mr Hunter that he was the one who shot this chap. Full of remorse, he then plans to evade punishment by burying the body. He grabs a shovel and pickaxe from his truck and traipses back to the site. As he is digging, the "corpse" on the ground comes alive again. He was never dead.
Now our hero - I use the term advisedly - is overcome with joy. He didn't murder anyone after all. So he stops digging the shallow grave and tries to help the victim, who turns out to be some kind of loner living off grid. For a while they engage in conversation. Maybe at this point, if the hunter had really tried to get the guy to hospital, or at least call for help, the loner could have survived. But instead, they talked for a bit more and all the while the victim was getting weaker and weaker.
And then the old guy goes and dies, so back to Plan A, which is to bury the body. Expending considerable effort, the nutcase with the rifle manages to manhandle the body into the grave and cover it over with leaves and brushwood. Then he goes down to a creek to wash off the blood on his hands. As he is doing this he gets some kind of premonition from his wife. And suddenly, the man realises he cannot carry on living with this awful secret that he planned to tell no one about. In the next scene, he is back at the grave, fishing the old guy out again. Again, I wondered: is the old guy going to come alive again? Nope. He is well and truly deceased by now.
Finally, we observe the hunter dragging the corpse to his pickup. He then drives it to the local police station and hands himself in. We never get to see the final outcome, as he can barely speak to the duty police officer, let alone describe what has happened.
The film ends.
Now, we can only surmise what happens next. He will probably be arrested and charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by initially hiding the body. But I don't know whether any charges would stick, as it was obviously an accidental death caused by utter stupidity. He will never forget what happened for as long as he lives, but having, belatedly, done the right thing, society might just forgive him for being such a fool, and he won't need to lie to his wife and kids.
The message this movie sends out loud and clear to anyone who thinks he can easily become macho man and get a gun: Just don't, okay! Stick with the day job. Choose a hobby that isn't going to endanger complete strangers. It really made me think of the times I have walked through woods just for the fresh air and heard gunshots far away.
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