7 Years Later, Henry Cavill’s Dark Crime Thriller Is Dominating Paramount+

Some thrillers vanish so quietly that even an A-list lead can’t stop them from slipping through the cracks. That’s pretty much what happened with Night Hunter, the grim 2018 crime thriller led by Henry Cavill. It never became much of a mainstream talking point, but streaming has a habit of rescuing exactly this kind of movie. Now Paramount+ viewers are giving it the sort of attention it missed the first time around.

The film has been charting on Paramount+ and was recently highlighted as one of the platform’s stronger-performing movie titles. Its ranking has moved around, but the bigger point is that it’s clearly being rediscovered. That’s not too hard to understand. Dark serial-killer thrillers tend to do well at home, and Cavill’s name gives the movie a fresh hook for viewers scrolling past it now.

The cast includes Cavill as Marshall, Ben Kingsley as Cooper, and Alexandra Daddario as Rachel. It’s a nasty, twisty movie with a much bleaker edge than some fans might expect from Cavill. But that’s also why it’s working as a sleeper hit. Paramount+ subscribers are clearly in the mood for something dark, and Night Hunter is benefiting from that.

Related

Remembering the Icons of Film — Collider Movie Quiz

We pay tribute to the talents who helped define Hollywood.

Is ‘Night Hunter’ Worth Watching?

Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com stated that Night Hunter is the kind of thriller that thinks being darker automatically makes it deeper. The film throws viewers into a nasty story about a serial killer, broken cops, and vigilantes, but instead of feeling tense or smart, it mostly feels ugly and exhausting. It wants to explore moral gray areas, but its version of that is mostly just making everyone unpleasant.

“The most annoying thing about a movie that’s simultaneously as preachy and grim as Night Hunter isn’t that it’s ideologically repugnant, but that it’s also dramatically inert and actively unpleasant. I, myself, am a Stanley Tucci man (he is money in the bank, except maybe in the Hunger Games movies), but even I cringed when he, as the stereotypically overworked Commish, tries to take a swing at Simon (That guy killed a half dozen of my guys, and some had families!). Testing the limits of good taste in otherwise formulaic grimdark entertainment is one thing, but pushing against those boundaries for its own sake is just tiresome.”

Night Hunter is streaming now.

Release Date

August 29, 2019

Runtime

95 minutes

Writers

David Raymond

Producers

Kevin Scott Frakes, Nadine de Barros, Larry Harding, Nasrat Muzayyin, Zorin Finkelsen, Francesca Dutton, James Lancaster, Mitesh Parikh, Niraj Parikh, Gaurav Talwar, Pulak Parikh, Rob Wood, Mark Catton, Rick Dugdale, Sundip K. Bhundia, Steven Ashley, Peter Aitken, James Milligan, Chris Pettit, Alastair Burlingham, Buddy Patrick, Robert Ogden Barnum, Dave Hansen, Tony Parker