Hunting Humans (2002) Online

Not bad at all. This is a very low budget horror movie, and the picture quality is total crap. Acting is pretty bad, too, except for the main character, who does a genuinely okay job of it. The real reason to watch this movie is how intelligent some parts of it are...it's a battle of wits between the two men, and despite how low budget it all is, there are some fun kills and intelligent plot elements/twists for you to sink your teeth into. It surprised me how entertaining this could get, compared to the hundreds of other terrible B-flicks coming out all the time. The creators of this one definitely did their homework.

It's really cheesy at some points, though, and the directing is pretty sloppy. I guess that's something you can expect when you're walking into a B-flick though, so don't say I didn't warn you. This is raw, uncompromising, and rather unprofessional, but who needs polished refinement in this genre, anyway? Recommended to horror fans only.

So I got this movie recommended by a horror-film buff at the local videostore, and I somewhat appreciate that he told me about this movie. It has a good plot and great potential to do something with it. It has a good soundtrack with mostly electronic songs on it. But it felt too much like a student project film for some course on film-making.

The main actor gets annoying fast and can't deliver dialogue at all. (Probably why they cast him in a serial killer role) And having the serial killer talk about what he's doing the entire length of the movie gets really boring and drawn out. I don't know where they got any of these actors, and I hope I'm not "fortunate" to see them in another film. The plot itself falls flat when the multi-twist ending gets pushed in your face and you feeel like screaming, "Oh man!" and feel ultimately disappointed. And if the main guy gives me one more Nietzsche quote, I'm gonna be his new killer.

Overall, a good concept which goes dry and actors who can't act or speak so they speak over the action. And the quality is sub par if that means anything. 4/10

Now, here's a very cheaply made film that seems to have a great deal of effort put into it. Made around the same era as textbook slasher movies Bachelor Party Massacre, Memorial Day Massacre, and Massacre Day Massacre, Hunting Humans puts a spin on things by having us accompany the killer everywhere, and hear his thoughts.

That's been done before, but when our killer finds himself being hunted by another serial killer, things get interesting. The film becomes a game between the killers to see who is smartest and rather than descending into gore or banality, there's actually a lot of twists and surprises along the way.

Hunting Humans isn't a gore fest, but has a lot going on plot wise. Who exactly is stalking our guy, and how? What does he actually want? Who do you root for when your hero is a cold murderer himself? This film has a lot going for it despite the budget, and gets highly recommended by me.

Only down points? Some of the acting is shaky, but that's about it. Well done, filmmakers!

I found myself enjoying this. I understand what goes in to an indie production. I know what it's like to work on a low-budget feature. There were some decent twists in the end. AND a good story from start to finish. The low-budget aspects came through quite often, and some of the acting was spotty, but I really respect what the filmmakers were trying to accomplish. I enjoyed Ganz's acting.

The bad- for the most part was the sound mix. It sucked, you could pick out where sound tracks were added- not much was seamless. I don't know if this was shot on 16mm or super -16, but you could often hear the camera sound. Until I heard the camera sound i thought iit was shot on a cheap miniDV cmaera. i don't know why the footage looks below average, but it wasn't too distracting.

But i'd have to say that the orchestral score ROCKED. it was great. don't know where you got it, but it was really good.

Ultimately I respect what the filmmakers were doing, and I say keep rockin'. There was a good story here. Just get better actors and a better camera next time. Rick and Kevin rock, though.

It disappoints me to see how the horror fan base has been reduced to internet trolls who (likely) sit in their parents' basements watching movies all day. I mean seriously. One horror review on IMDb was posted by someone who rated over 16,000 movies (!) on the site. I mean, come on! I didn't know 16,000 movies existed, let alone could be watched and rated since this database was launched. Dude, go out and take a walk or something. Run a marathon. Do something. Anything! Sheesh…

I point out the above merely to illustrate how the bulk of the message board comments on films like "Hunting Humans" typically ferment and hatch from the weak brains of people with no lives. Kevin Kangas' debut effort is SUPERB, and it pleases me that so many people who have actually taken the time to review the film gave it the benefit of the doubt.

The concept of a serial killer being stalked by a serial killer is both novel and deftly executed (on a shoestring). The use of voice-over helps gloss over the acting deficiencies, and the score is impressive. If you are prepared to give a low-budget shot on video film a chance, you will be IMMENSELY ENTERTAINED. Ignore the trolls. This film stands out as one of the better no-budget thrillers made in the DVD era.

From the opening monologue the movie drags. For a movie so obsessed with patterns you would think that they would notice just how monotonous the narration is. First we talk about patterns and how the guy doesn't have any. Then we go kill someone. Then back to the pattern talk again. While the premise of two killers going toe to toe is a good one the acting cannot save the movie. While the main characters can be overlooked the supporting cast must have been picked up from the local bus stop. Avoid this movie at all costs.

Why is it that low budget movies are always daring??? Movie makers in Hollywood have the bucks to produce huge, original movies but rely on updating older movies or basing movies on something we already know. "Hunting Humans" is a twisted and original movie, that worked with hardly any budget, that grabbed my attention & held it. This movie is rough and grainy, much like "The Blair Witch Project" , it is a very well done movie. The character Aric Blue is well played by Rick Ganz, he's a smooth, charming psycho. Kevin Kangas did a great job writing & directing this movie, it's refreshing to see something original. This movie makes you think about the people around you, after all anyone is capable of murder.

the premise of hunting humans is good.the mind and thoughts of a serial killer and whats happens when the serial killer is suddenly threatened and challenged by a second serial killer.the internal dialogue of our star killer is hilarious(in a sick sick way).the plot is pretty original.but the acting,camera work,and sound are a lil high schoolish ,and the end gets corny beyond belief. i knew you knew that i knew that you knew that i knew that you were knowing that i used to know what you forgot to know that you would do that; is the way it starts to play out.id recommend seeing it but not expecting too much.you might enjoy it that way.4 is a honest review..this would be good material for a larger budget re imagining.

The story is not too bad.

Even though you can easily get bored in the first half of the movie it is worth to watch it until the end.

I mainly enjoyed the last 15minutes of the movie when the story really gets going and you find yourself twisted every 2 secs.

5 out of 10.

For a LOW BUDGET FILM, this was actually a fun watch; my wife and I took it in on a rainy Sunday afternoon here in Knoxville. It was included on a four movie DVD with a British film from 1970 entitled "The Beast in the Cellar," but I digress...

O.K. the previous review just before mine is correct about the opening. A famous on-line reviewer once wrote that if you see a woman's breasts in the first five minutes, it is a bad movie. The narration was annoying, just as the previous review mentioned. However, if you're killing some time, give this movie a chance. The writing is pretty well done after the first eight to ten minutes of the movie. The plot is about a serial killer, and there is an interesting twist. THE MAIN PROBLEM I had with the film was THE SOUND. One could hear the lead character's voice, but the supporting cast's voices were harder to hear for all of the office scenes.

The reviewer before me commented on the bad acting. Not all of the acting was bad, just most of it was... The lead character and his antagonist were played by good actors, IMO. Many of the film angles were creative, surprisingly so for such a low budget film. A trick the main character plays on a detective is darkly funny.

Finally, this is no "Silence of the Lambs," "Seven," or "American Psycho." But it is somewhat original, and it has a good plot, which makes it a fun view.

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE! It is a big waste of time. My friends and I, aspiring filmmakers ourselves, rented this thinking it sounded good, and since it was an indie film with a distribution deal, it might make for a learning experience. I wish we could have gotten our money back. First off, they used a 16mm camera that had to have been at least thirty years old, thus making the quality of the picture suck. Second, the writing was terrible, I could feel my IQ dropping. Third, these guys couldn't act their way out of a wet paper bag. Fourth, whatever money they had was blown on the menus for the DVD, and their behind-the-scenes footage was better quality than the film itself. And no, I'm not being too hard on these guys. They had something of a budget, not much maybe only a few hundred dollars, but that's more than the people I work with have ever had and our stuff is a thousand times better. I've seen better stuff come from a high school drama club. These guys shouldn't be aloud to make anymore movies.

Aric Blue hunts humans. He's very good at it. He learns people's daily patterns then exploits them. However, problems arise when a rival serial killer learns Aric's patterns. At first, I wasn't expecting much. The shoddy photography and disjointed editing gave it the feel of bad backyard movie, but the style soon grew on me. The old cliché of a low budget giving a film a documentary feel kicked in. I found the murder in the pre-title sequence somewhat engrossing. The sequence was essentially MOS footage accompanied by sardonic voice over from the serial killer. Very nice. Unfortunately, the titles warned me that the film would eventually fall apart. How? Well, first the titles credited all of the actors in the film.

That's okay. The scary part were the crew credits, where many of the names of the actors reappeared in other capacities. Since it is rare to find excellent crew people who can really act, or excellent actors who work on crews, I correctly feared for the quality of the movie. The bottom line was that the film managed to develop some good energy when it stuck to essentially MOS (mit-out-sound) footage accompanied by voice over. However, there wasn't a single good dialogue scene in the film. Technically, the sound recording itself was horrible, but not anywhere as bad as the acting itself. The lead, Rick Ganz, is adequate, but I would venture to say that the guy who plays Aric's annoying co-worker gave the worst performance I have ever seen in a commercially released film. This is all a shame because this film offered a fresh and original perspective on the tired serial killer genre, and small snatches of it worked reasonably well. This was a frustrating movie. I wish it were better.

I have done four shorts and a feature-length movie and I will no longer have a worry when it comes the quality of my work after seeing this. In all seriousness, the story concept was rather clever and considering it looks like it was done with one camera, maybe two at times, it was well executed. The voice over work inside the mind of the killer was hilarious (or disturbing depending on your sense of humor - mine is sick).

A serial killer, Aric, who has no pattern to follow narrates his inner thoughts as he takes you on a journey of human hunting. His theory is that every one has a pattern and once he establishes yours, your number is up. As he is moving along without a hitch, he discovers that a fellow serial killer is hunting him. A battle of which one can outdo the other's murder ensues along with the cornyness of each one hiring a P.I. to follow the other. Aric gets a hold of his stalker's information and now they hunt each other. I don't want to say anymore in case you would like to see it. It's worth a look in my opinion if you have too much spare time.

I agree with the other commentary on this film. Low budget, not the best acting, but the plot itself drives it. It's slow at first...dangerously slow to hitting the STOP button on my vcr, but then a huge plot twist occurs and it kept me hook for the rest of the movie. I realized it was slow at first on purpose, to make that plot twist all the more special. If you can, watch this movie without reading the back of the box first. Go in blindly, and the surprises will be even more cool.

This movie really took me by surprise. For the first few minutes I thought it was a fairly standard issue low budget slasher flick, but just as it looked like it was going to take a nose dive, it took a major, unexpected left turn and became a really engrossing and fun ride. I can't say much without giving anything away, but I'll say this - the writer/director did a terrific job working with what could have been cliche'd material, and turned in a film that delivers. Clearly done on a shoe string budget, the movie transcends its low cost and entertains massively.

Reading the back of the case I thought this movie might be a good choice to watch. That, however, was a huge mistake. This movie had horrible acting, what must have been an insanely low budget, and the directing was quite poor. I'm sure such directors as Alex Proyas, or others would agree with me on this. Now I am a fan of independent films, but this one was just horrible all around. Another bad feature was how they chose to tell the story. The majority of the film was done by narration. In this type of genre that does not make for a good movie. It often caused the film to seem as if it were dragging along. Another part I had noticed was that they often tried elaborating on certain aspects, like "key capture" software, and the writer/directors knowledge on lock picking. It all made it seem very hokey, and not thought out.

~Spoiler~

Hunting Humans is a perfect example of getting it half right. The idea is solid and original. Aric Blue is a serial killer; he hunts humans. According to Blue, every human has a pattern, and once he has yours, you're dead. In a twist befitting the genre, another serial killer finds Aric's pattern and a series of brutal oneupmanship begins. All in all a pretty intriguing plot. And, for once, the lead actor is actually quite good. Rick Ganz plays the homicidal Aric and I thought he had a good energy. Although I wasn't too big on some of the voice-over dialogue. It just seemed that they were trying to force some of the humor in there. At the same time, some of that same dialogue is very unintentionally hilarious. I did love the "Pickles" scene though. Aside from Ganz, the rest of the cast is downright sad. Pretty much what you expect from this type of project. Director Kevin Kangas throws in some nice touches. Perhaps he relies on slow-motion too much, but I'm digging his style for the most part. He's not too flashy and he almost gives it a documentary feel. Almost. I have a real tough time getting past this new digital age of film-making. I hate the way it looks. If they could just spend that extra money some of these films would have a better shelf life. Wishful thinking, I know. Kangas and Ganz could have had a more rock-n-roll version of Henry on their hands if the script were a bit more polished and they had shot on film.

My boyfriend and I rented this movie with a slight hesitation because it is a low-budget film. Were we surprised!!! The script is original and tantalizing, a lot of twists and turns, and humor. Aric Blue is a serial killer, but he feels obligated to murder his victims because they are too stupid not to be murdered. He is stalked by a rival serial killer in a suspenseful cat and mouse game. Very well done!!! The narration by Aric Blue is interesting as he explains his reasons for killing and his strategy. At some points I began to think that Aric's motives are justified, and I didn't feel any pity for his victims. They are portrayed as being an annoyance that are deserving of his wrath. His rival, known as "Dark", is an entertaining character that asks questions of Aric Blue that I wanted answers to as well, "Whose house are you living in anyway?" This team, Kevin Kangas and Rick Ganz, are bound for Hollywood recognition, if they want it. Great writing, good direction, some lame acting, fantastic music score. I highly recommend this movie to anyone that wants to sit on the edge of their seat and question their own psyche.

HUNTING HUMANS is an indie serial killer picture made just before the genre boomed in the mid 2000s. It's a shot on video slice of amateurish nonsense and involves a plot in which two rival serial killers go around stalking each other. There's little in the way of gore and absolutely nothing in the way of suspense, just monotonous line delivery and a whole heap of badness.

I'm still on the fence as to what to make of this film.

Great idea and unlike some of the other reviews here, I like narrated movies.

Kind of makes me feel like I'm included.

Terrible acting, and the ending was ridiculously​ slow (the husband was having a fit..."shut up and kill the guy! A real killer wouldn't waste time!") and really watered down what little progress the film made.

I will give the film, this...

I get so sick of boobs in films. Seems like every film that even remotely fits into the "off the cuff" category, whether it's horror, drama, thriller...whatever, has to have boobs...sometimes just two, oftentimes more.

First five or so minutes of this film...boobs.

I'm sitting on the couch saying, "REALLY?"

But then, I was pleasantly surprised later on with a nice butt shot from this Ganz character, who, while not hot...at least it was a naked butt for a pair of boobs.

It's about time.

Would be good for a popcorn night, chugging some beers ...but don't expect much more than just a decent time waster if you absolutely can find nothing better to watch.

The movie starts out a tiny bit dull and "what the..." The killing scenes are a little poor but the story and depth of the story, is about all there is.

Personally my sister and I loved it, it had a certain catch to it. I'd recommend watching it if you are a fan of B-Movies, it feels kind of unique and has certain things in it that made me bust a gut laughing. Like all B-Movies. Some of the ridiculous murder scenes. There tends to be moments of absolutely needless swearing and crabbiness in the main character that reminds me of a vulgar 10 year old who didn't get their candy from the store.

The ending, is ridiculous. No spoilers or anything, just saying. It's pretty awesome but a little over the top and... well it kind of left a lot of holes.

Anyway, pick it up if you're a B-Movie fan who likes 'low intelligence' psycho-esque movies that try and sound smart.

your are a film maker and know what it takes to get a low budget film made. Some said the acting was a tad ragged, maybe a better word is spotty. My guess is they had a time limit and had to get it done.If they were doing this on film and didn't have daily's then they would have a problem too. Some said it was made on 16 mm or DV not enough lighting was the problem with the grain look( had the same thing happen to me) The plot was unique the writing not bad,, again try writing a script yourself. The writer knew a good bit about spyware how to make keys, etc. I enjoyed this stuff some didn't. He didn't dwell on it just tossed it in. These guys will improve and i admire their doing what they have done. They are film makers and actors and just like others that start out they want to improve. If you can do better send me a copy i'll let you know how good you are against how good you think you are.

Just saw this last night. Enjoyed the voice over dialog very much. Definitely low budget but an excellent outing by this young Baltimore-area director. Very humorous with a few good scares as well. As an aside....that lead character is HOT! Check out FEAR OF CLOWNS as well. Like I said, not the best, but surprisingly entertaining. Sometimes the plot twists at the end become a bit much, but in the end they play more like a comical chess-game that lead you into an absurdist exercise of cat-and-mouse. Not for those who cannot grasp sarcasm and irony. Whoever wrote this dialog must have worked in either a telemarketers office or other phone related business. The main character's interior comments about the office world are truly hilarious!

One of the famous lines from the Dirty Harry movies is "A man's got to know his limitations". If writer/director Kevin Kangas had known his limitations, Hunting Humans may have become an entertaining piece of cheap trash. Instead, it's like a really bad joke.

This film tells the story of Aric Blue (Rick Ganz). Aric works at one of those companies that helps you refinance your mortgage over the phone. When not working, he lounges around his house like an underwear model. Oh, and he's also a serial killer. Aric studies people's patterns and habits, then he uses that information to murder them. The movie never even tries to explain why Aric does this, but he's been doing it for quite a while and plans to keep doing it forever…until another serial killer enters the picture. Calling himself "Dark", he challenges and taunts Aric over who is better and deadlier. Aric tries to track down his enemy and that leads to an ending that is completely cartoonish.

There's no reason Hunting Humans should be any good. It's a punishingly cheap movie, shot with probably only one camera, using the most basic sort of sound and lighting equipment, at locations that were probably the homes of the cast and crew and with actors that cannot act at all. These filmmakers don't even have the money or technique to pull off any decent scenes of violence or gore or shock or suspense. This should have been one of those films that you can't even make it all the way through before you shut it off in bored disgust.

But writer/director Kangas actually comes up with a fairly neat idea. He tells almost all of the story through voice over narration, where Aric describes his life and how he kills people to the audience. Not only does that greatly limit the amount of painfully stilted acting from the cast, but it lets Kangas set up some interesting juxtapositions of the real Aric we hear in the narration with the facade he presents to the rest of the world. There are even moments where that juxtaposition allows the audience to understand things about Aric that he doesn't even understand about himself.

That relatively simple storytelling device got Kangas one-third of the way to an okay film. He got another third of the way their by keeping his direction primitive but competent. None of the camera work in Hunting Humans is at all good but none of it is laughably bad. There was just one more thing needed to make this a movie people would genuinely enjoy watching.

Unfortunately, Kangas thought what he needed was a wildly clever ending…and he completely blows it. He comes up with a conclusion that has not one or two twists. No, he bombards the audience with seven separate twists in the final battle between Aric and "Dark". That's right, 7 plot twists in the space of about 10 minutes and only one of the twists had any build up at all in the story. The others are totally pulled out of Kangas' butt. To execute a big ending like that you have to lay the groundwork for it throughout the film without the audience realizing what you're doing. While Kangas may have seen The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects, he doesn't have the talent or skill to pull anything like that off. Like a bad joke, Hunting Humans leaves you with a punchline that makes you regret wasting your time.

If Kangas had known his own limitations and admitted to himself he couldn't execute a big ending, he might have seen what his movie really needed staring him in the face. More naked chicks. There is one nude girl who gets killed at the start of this movie, but every other person who gets murdered is a fully clothed dude. A series of attractive, bare assed women running around in terror before being slain is exactly the sort of crude, prurient, exploitative fun that Hunting Humans needed to make it worthwhile. It would have made it a very low rent, low class, low brow sort of movie, but it's one you would have told your buddies was worth a rental.

By thinking he could come up with a great finish, Kevin Kangas ruined his otherwise admirable work in this film. If he'd gone with the lowest common denominator, instead of fooling himself that he's a great filmmaker, he would have actually made a better movie. Sometimes aiming low and hitting the target is better than aiming high and missing badly.

Then you're right. This movie was bullshit. Easy to predict. Full of patterns. We thought this would be a bad movie, and so we bought it and watched it so that we could laugh at it. Pathetic. As Nietzsche once said, "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." And if you think about it, he's right.

So you thought that we thought this was a bad movie? Well, you're wrong. We knew that you'd think we thought it was bad, so we deliberately wrote the above review to lure you into a false sense of security. Do you know how to pick a lock? Kevin Kangas doesn't.

Naw, we're just joking. This movie sucked. We thought that it would be funny if you thought that we thought that it was funny that we wrote a good review and tried to obfuscate it under a good one. And that's funny. Actually, we have no idea what that means.

-But seriously, though.... Hunting Humans is a perfect storm of badness. Is it the poor script or the poor delivery of lines that makes them so hilarious? Is it the art school reject camera shots or the Nine Inch Nails ripoff soundtrack that makes the scene so corny? Did Kevin Kangas deliberately produce a movie that's so bad it's good, or did he really just produce a bad movie that ended up being good? Or does he already know that we think he's produced a deliberately bad movie so really he actually just produced a bad one? It's hard to isolate exactly what it is, but apparently if you do enough things wrong in producing a film, it is possible to come out on the other side of pure genius.

Yeah, so, it was bad, but bad in that "so bad it's good kind of way." I mean, we liked it. Anyone could like this movie. Accountants. People who like pickles. Private investigators. You never know who might like a movie. I mean, for that matter, you never know who might write a positive review about a movie. It could be anyone. I mean, ANYONE could write a review. Anyone could type in www.IMDb.com, sign up using a bunk e-mail address, verify the IMDb link at that bunk e-mail address, click on "post a comment", and write a comment- -positive or negative. ANYONE could write a positive review. But.... you wouldn't know what we're talking about.

And if you think about it, there are a lot more people out there like that than you think. P. T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute." And if you think about it, he's right.

No, really, This is an awesome movie. We're just employing a method of postmodern criticism, tied in some manner to the aesthetic-narrative decisions inherent in the film's script, to write a review that is, hopefully, appropriate to Kangas's vision. Rick Ganz may have two less vowels in his name than his character does, but man can he simmer like a spring teapot.

So now do you think that we think that you think that we think this is a bad movie? Good. I've hidden 18 guns behind every bush in this small forested area. Arrivederci, you proletarians.