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I've read the script. Here's the synopsis. SPOILERS


It starts with with a cell phone text thread. There are several people involved the thread, and their names are Athena, Ted, Liberty, Julius, Miranda, and Oliver. Athena writes, "At least the hunt's coming up. Nothing better than going out to The Manor and slaughtering a dozen inbred rednecks." (I've heard that it was "deplorables" in the original draft, but it was later changed to "rednecks"). Liberty writes that they had promised never to talk about the Manor over the Internet and that she is deleting the messages.

Then we get to see the part of the story shown in the trailer. A bunch of conservatives (most from the south) are drugged and flown to a country location. One wakes up too early while on a luxury jet, fights with a character called The Doctor, and is killed by Athena, who jams the heel of a stiletto shoe through his eye. The rest wake up gagged in the country location (which seems at first to be Arkansas) where they find a crate of weapons (which also has the words, "Four legs good. Two legs bad." painted on it and contains a small live pig). After they find a key in the crate, they remove their gags, but promptly start getting hunted down and killed.

Several of them seem to figure out what's happening, and mention the word "Manorgate", a reference to a conspiracy theory they had heard, which involves rich liberal elites kidnapping conservatives, bringing them to a manor in Vermont, and hunting them down.

One of the hunted conservatives, a Mississippian combat veteran named Crystal (played by Hilary Swank in the movie) winds up turning the tables and killing some of the hunters. She takes one of their walkie-talkies, and finds out from one of the hunters' conversations that her code-name is "Snowball". She and another one of the hunted people (a man named Gary) escape onto a moving freight train, which turns out to have Middle Eastern refugees hiding on it.

The train gets stopped and both the two hunted people and the refugees get captured by Croatian soldiers (it turns out that the "hunting grounds" were in Croatia rather than either Vermont or Arkansas). The soldiers get spooked due to an argument between Gary and one of the refugees, and start shooting. Crystal saves the lives of a refugee mother and baby by using herself as a human shield, while Gary seemingly escapes.

Crystal tells the Croatians her story about being kidnapped and hunted, and they bring in a man named Don who claims to be another one of the hunted. Convinced by Crystal and Don's story, the Croatians call the American embassy. A vehicle driven by someone claiming to be from the Embassy comes to pick them up, supposedly in order to bring them back to America. But Crystal quickly figures out that he's one of the hunters and kills him. She then opens the vehicle's trunk, to find Gary's dead body (with a hunting knife in his forehead) and a map.

While she pulls the knife out of Gary's forehead so she can use it, Don says they should make a run for it and try to get back To America. Crystal says that isn't the best thing to do, and tells Don a story her mother had told her when she was a young girl. It's a modified version of the fable of the tortoise and the hare.

In this version, the "jackrabbit" and the "box turtle" have a race. The jackrabbit gets cocky and takes a nap, causing the box turtle to win. The night after the race, the box turtle is at home celebrating the victory with his family, when the jackrabbit busts down the door, smashes the box turtle and his family to death with a hammer, and sits down at the table and eats the box turtle family's supper. She says that the moral of the story is that the jackrabbit always wins. Don confusedly asks whether they are the jackrabbit or the box turtle and she just looks at him as if he's dumb instead of answering.

Using the map, Crystal and Don track down and kill the remaining hunters (named Martin, Doug, Liberty, Dale, Richard, and The Doctor). After the hunters are dead, a message from Athena for Don comes in on a laptop that the hunters had. Don acts confused, as if he doesn't understand what's going on. Crystal tells Don to put his gun down, as she can't tell whether he's really a hunter working for Athena, or Athena is just trying to trick her into thinking so. Don doesn't put the gun down and makes a move that may or may not mean that he is going to shoot Crystal, so Crystal shoots him. Athena talks to her through the laptop, telling her to come fight her, and giving her directions.

Crystal follows the directions and finds a nearby mansion. As she steps onto the front porch, she is told through an intercom that the porch is wired with explosives, and she must leave her gun in the mailbox before coming in, lest she immediately be blown to bits.

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As Crystal steps into the house (having left her gun in the mailbox), there's a flashback. In the flashback, we see Athena (who is a rich high-society career woman) being confronted by people from the company she works for. They inform her that the phone of one of her co-worker friends was hacked, and a text thread (the one from the very beginning of the movie) has been leaked, and that conservative conspiracy theorists didn't realize that the texts were meant as sarcastic humor, and instead created a conspiracy theory called "Manorgate", which posits that Athena has a Manor in Vermont where she brings kidnapped conservatives to hunt every year. They then tell her that she's fired, and so are the others involved in the text thread.

Back in the present day, we see Crystal make her way into the mansion and find Athena in the kitchen. Athena implies that Don wasn't really a hunter, and she tricked Crystal into thinking he was so she'd kill him. Crystal asks her point-blank whether this is the case, to which Athena replies, "Maybe. Maybe not." Athena then finally tells Crystal why she and the others were kidnapped and hunted. It turns out that the text thread was indeed just a joke, and the Manorgate conspiracy theory was just a nutty theory made up by a kook. And Crystal was that kook.

Due to Crystal's conspiracy theory, Athena lost her job and reputation, and decided to exact her revenge by tracking down the person most responsible for destroying her reputation by making up the conspiracy theory, and punishing her by making "Manorgate" a real thing and making her and other people like her the prey.

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Here are some choice Athena quotes from the twist reveal portion of the script:

"It was just a joke. An obvious joke. But you ignorami took it literally because nuance and appreciation for satire were bred out when you people started fucking your cousins! I am worth hundreds of millions. I have a doctorate. I’ve chained myself to redwoods and nursed orphans in Zaire! What kind of fucking simpleton would actually believe that I WOULD FUCKING HUNT HUMAN FUCKING BEINGS FOR SPORT?!?"


And:

"Now it is. Now. Because you made it true. Your fucking lies cost me everything and the other fucking trolls believed them and spread them and nothing I said would convince you it was bullshit... so why not just do it?!? This was your idea. Not mine."


After hearing this revelation, Crystal tells Athena that she got the wrong Crystal. She says that she is Crystal May Creasey, and the real originator of the conspiracy theory was Crystal Mae Creasey, who lives in the same county as her, and whose mail she sometimes receives by accident. Athena asks Crystal whether this is true, to which she replies, "Maybe. Maybe not."

After this exchange, Crystal and Athena fight to the death with various kitchen implements. The scriptwriters didn't specify every single move, instead writing that the fight would involve (among other things) frying pans, meat thermometers, knives, a cheese sandwich grill, etc, and would be shot and choreographed in the style of the John Wick movies.

At the end of the fight, the two women seriously wound each other, but Crystal manages to apparently mortally wound Athena. As Athena is dying, the following exchange occurs:

"CRYSTAL: Why’d you call me “Snowball?”

ATHENA: It’s a reference to George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” He’s... a pig.

CRYSTAL: Yeah... But why am I Snowball? Snowball’s an idealist. He wants to make the world a better place. That’s why the other pigs make up lies about him. To turn him into the enemy. You should be Snowball."

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The script then states that Athena dies stunned to learn that Crystal had read "Animal Farm".

Crystal herself seems mortally wounded at first, but is too tough to be killed that easily. She cauterizes a stab wound in her chest with a blowtorch and makes her way onto Athena's private jet, holding the pilot and stewardess at gunpoint.

She gets a luxury ride back to America, all while eating Athena's caviar and drinking her wine. The pilot and stewardess realize that she is their new boss, and settle into this new status quo. The script hammers the parallel home by flat-out stating that Crystal is the "jackrabbit".

You can read the script here:

https://www.scribd.com/document/421441195/Screenplay-The-Hunt-Damon-Lindelof-and-Nick-Cuse

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