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| Source: Wikipedia |
If your significant other should die with ten thousand ill-gotten dollars missing, don't trust the first amicable stranger that ambles into town. Just don't. And definitely don't marry the creep you've known for one day, even if you're lonely, or he's charming, or your pinhead friends nag you. Even if he says he's a preacher, and makes a damn good show of it too.
Because that means you might be in a Southern grotesque. A genre fueled by human nastiness, sustained by gullible morons.
Admittedly, the reverent cuts an impressive figure, amidst all the cutting throats. He sports L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattoos on his knuckles. In his resonant baritone, he preaches the dominance of L-O-V-E over H-A-T-E. His busy switchblade hints otherwise. Because underneath his spiffy Sunday suit, he harbors a festering conscience-shaped hole in his soul.
In case this character retained any ambivalence, his presence is announced onscreen by dramatic horn blats.
Only the dead robber's children show a lick of sense. Because they know where the money's hidden. It doesn't help that, when Mom ain't looking, the creep badgers and browbeats the brats to fork over the cash. As the mother's influence wanes, the tension tightens like a noose.
Gospel hymns have seldom sounded so ominous.
My only complaint souring the suspense: the conflict hinges on ostensibly good characters behaving like idiots, a role they cheerfully oblige. Every character may likely annoy you at some point or another. Be warned.
Also, the titular hunter might be divinely precognizant or part bloodhound; and neither option strikes me as theologically reassuring.
Recommended to comfort poor widows, and to scare straight the heedless masses who believe anything worded well or said by a demagogue toting a Bible.
92 minutes.
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