Film / The Hunt (2012)

Yes, this is the good guy. Don't let his cheekbones trick you.

Lucas: You and I have to bring everything into the open.
Theo: Lucas, I know her. Why would she lie?

The Hunt (Jagten) is a 2012 Danish drama directed by Thomas Vinterberg. It's a study of human nature and mass hysteria.

It is set in a small, conservative Danish community. It follows Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a well-liked, friendly kindergarten teacher and divorcé whose life has begun to improve. His relationship with his estranged son has bettered, and he has found new love with a co-worker named Nadja. He has his mates to support him, including best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen).

However, Theo has a daughter named Klara who attends Lucas' kindergarten, and who rapidly develops an unhealthy obsession with Lucas. After she kisses him on the lips during school playtime, Lucas is quick to rebuff her infatuation. In a childish rage, she unwittingly implies to the head teacher, Grethe, that Lucas has sexually abused her.

The lie begins to mutate and grow, with Klara's account quickly spread by gossip. Through paranoia and the fact that kids often repeat what they hear, some of the other children report signs of abuse. Soon enough, the village turns on him, including the vast majority of his friends and co-workers. Because it's Lucas' word against Klara, and the adults believe that there's no way Klara would lie, he is quickly ostracised from the community. The only allies Lucas has are his son, Marcus (Lasse Fogelstrom), and a few friends.

The film later received a semi-musical English-language Screen-to-Stage Adaptation in London in 2019, starring Tobias Menzies as Lucas. The play later transferred to Brooklyn, New York for a limited run in 2024.

Not to be confused with The Hunt (2020).

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This film provides examples of:

• Berserk Button: Don't you ever mention the name "Kirsten" in Fanny's presence.
• Bittersweet Ending: Theo realizes that Klara was lying and makes up with Lucas on Christmas. A year later, Lucas is reunited with Marcus and back with Nadja, and he and his son go on the annual hunt, where he has appeared to have made up with more of his friends. But tensions are still evident, as someone takes a shot at him, misses, and flees before he can get a good look at them.
• Bookends: The film begins and ends with the community's annual hunt.
• Break the Cutie:
  • This entire movie is devoted to the breakage of Lucas. He begins as a likable, enthusiastic kindergarten teacher, but slowly degrades as gossip fans the flames. He is beaten, rejected and held in contempt.
  • This extends to Marcus, his son.
• Both Sides Have a Point: The townsfolk have a right to close their ranks against a predator in their neighborhood, but Lucas is, of course, innocent of the charges and should have a right to defend himself against them before being judged guilty by the community.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Subverted. Grethe thinks a kid of that age is innocent and unable to tell a lie. Apparently she is mistaken.
• Character Tic: Klara snuffles a lot.
• Chekhov's Gun: During the final scene, a big hunt starts, and everyone is getting a gun. We can guess something will happen with the guns.
• Children Are Innocent: Stated word-for-word. The children don't understand the ramifications of what they're saying and hold no ill will toward anyone. The trope also comes into effect by provoking extreme hostility from the community on the mere suspicion that someone has threatened the innocence of their children.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: Despite the hearing bringing up multiple discrepancies in the stories their children are telling them, the entire town still believes that Lucas is a pedophile.
• Corruption of a Minor: Unwittingly, Klara's brother helped to set the stage for the False Rape Accusation by showing his sister a photo of a "giant stiff rod" which disturbed her enough to use it against Lucas after he rejected her Precocious Crush.
• Corrupting Pornography: A friend of Klara's older brother Torsten shows Klara a pornographic picture. After she kisses her teacher Lucas and he gently but firmly rebuffs her, Klara - who is in kindergarten - is embarrassed and impulsively accuses him of abusing her. She uses the details that she gained from seeing the picture to describe the abuse, which causes Lucas's life to fall apart and destroys his relationships with everyone around him. This is emphasised because Klara is not malicious by nature, and quickly feels guilty for her lie, but the pornography led to her accusation being backed up and believed.
• The Determinator: Lucas insists on being allowed to buy his groceries, in spite of violent resistance.
• Distant Epilogue: The last scenes are showing the characters a year after the incident.
• Double-Meaning Title: The Hunt can stand for either the annual hunt taken by all men of the community, which bookends the film, as well as the Pædo Hunt of Lucas.
• Dysfunctional Family:
  • Lucas and his wife Kristen are divorced, and he is only allowed to see his son, Marcus, once every two weeks, despite Marcus wanting to see his father more often. She even disallows them speaking over the phone. Only after Marcus's repeated insistence does Kristen allow him to spend the Christmas at Lucas. The accusation makes this relationship even worse, which results in Marcus visiting Lucas without her mother's knowledge.
  • Theo seems to have a happy family at first glance. However, a scene at the beginning suggests that not everything is in order. He and his wife Agnes are arguing really hard over who should bring their daughter Klara to the kindergarten. Klara's occasional swearing indicates that it's probably not the first time.
• False Rape Accusation: Klara's angry comments are misconstrued, and suddenly Lucas has to flee for his life from a murderous mob convinced he's a child molester.
• Friend to All Children: Lucas is presented as such in the first act.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: Nadja takes off Lucas' glasses before they start kissing.
• Hunting "Accident": The final scene in which somebody shoots at Lucas during the hunt. The shot misses, intentionally or not.
• Ignored Confession: About halfway through the film, Klara tells her mother the truth, that Lucas hadn't done anything to her and that she'd just said something foolish. Her mother doesn't listen to her, and instead writes it off as Klara trying to repress what happened. As for why she would repress it after confessing to everything though...
• Implausible Deniability: When Lucas confronts Klara about the love letter and she denies it despite the evidence.
  Lucas: I found a small present in my coat pocket.
  Klara: It's not from me.
  Lucas: But it says "Klara".
  Klara: Then someone must be teasing you.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: A reverse example. The children all say they were abused in Lucas' basement, all describing its grey walls and orange sofa. However, Lucas' house doesn't have a basement. This results in the case against him being dismissed.
• Infallible Babble: Klara's father finally decides to believe Lucas after hearing his half-awake daughter confess (again) to lying.
• It Always Rains at Funerals: Lucas buries Fanny in pouring rain.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Klara's brother Torsten could be considered one. He is the one who showed Klara the pornographic photo that contributes to part of Klara's lie, yet he receives no admonishment from his parents or anything resembling punishment for his (albeit unintentional) contribution to Lucas' trouble.
  • It's possible that Grethe, the school principal (and the school itself), would be on the wrong end of a massive lawsuit for her shameful handling of the situation. But if that happened, we don't see it.
  • The person shooting at Lucas also qualifies. The setting sun's at their back, making it impossible for Lucas to identify him, and they run off seconds later over a distant hill. Even if the bullet could be traced to the gun, it is likely the culprit would simply claim he didn't see Lucas or that the gun went off accidentally (excuses that would be borderline-impossible to disprove), making it unlikely the attempted murder could be punished.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: The way the children stop singing at the church when Lucas suddenly goes for Theo.
• Male Frontal Nudity: The chubby fellow in the opening skinny dipping scene.
• Malicious Slander: Lucas is wrongly accused of being a child molester, which quickly ruins his reputation in the Close-Knit Community and sets off a nasty Pædo Hunt.
• Mama Bear: Klara's mother becomes ferocious when she thinks Lucas has molested her daughter, threatening to castrate him.
• Miscarriage of Justice: Before going to authorities, the schoolteacher seeks the opinion of someone without proper understanding of how to interrogate a child. Consequently, he leads her answers and produces false evidence which is nonetheless taken for the truth. Had Klara been questioned by a qualified expert first, this all might have been avoided. Luckily, holes in the accusations ultimately spare Lucas from a trial, but the damage is already done.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Played for Drama with Lucas. The film spend a lot of time showing how damaging it can be to an innocent person to be suspected of sexually assaulting a child, especially in a small, tight-knit community, and how long such an accusation can haunt someone.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • When Klara dreams of Lucas after the church scene, she openly apologizes for what her lie has done to him. After the Time Skip, she is still so ashamed nearly a year later that she can't look Lucas in the eye.
  • When Lucas proves to Theo beyond the shadow of a doubt that the accusation wasn't true, Theo breaks down crying from how he has treated his best friend.
• Oh, Crap!: Lucas learning that the rest of the children are lying about him, too.
• Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: Lucas made life harder for himself by not immediately seeking help from a lawyer. This can be attributed to the creators being aware of this trope and trying not to compromise the audience's perception of his innocence.
• Papa Wolf: Theo threatens to put a bullet in Lucas' brain if the rumors are proven true.
• Pædo Hunt: The bulk of the film is the community turning on a member they mistakenly believe to be a child molester.
• Parents in Distress: Marcus, who loves his father, tries to force Klara to admit she's lying in order to get him released after he's arrested. Unfortunately, he's treated about the same as Lucas, simply for being his son.
• Potty Dance: One of the kids from the nursery does this in an early scene.
• Precocious Crush: Klara for Lucas, with a pretty horrendous outcome.
• Revenge by Proxy: Fanny gets killed in revenge for Lucas' supposed crime.
• Ripped from the Headlines: Among others, the makers of this film had admitted to being inspired by the Bjugn affair from Norway in 1992.
• Running Gag: Fanny's Berserk Button.
• Snowball Lie: Klara starts the lie in the heat of being angry with Lucas. The other children pick it up and make it worse (as children are prone to do), which makes matters even worse for Lucas.
• Spiteful Spit: Marcus spits in Klara's face as a sign of his utter contempt for her lying.
• Stress Vomit: Grethe throws up discretely during Klara's interview and then continues as if nothing had happened.
• Think of the Children!: The village becomes paranoid and hysterical because of the threat they think Lucas poses to their kids.
• The Unsolved Mystery: Who killed the dog, and who shot at Lucas?^note  Word of God has said it's Klara's mother
• Untrusting Community: Lucas is not welcome in the small town anymore after everyone believes him to be a child molester.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Klara's brother Torsten, whose brief display of pornographic material to his little sister helps lead to her angry lie about Lucas indecently exposing himself to her.
• Use Your Head: Lucas' revenge headbutt against the butcher.
• Vigilante Injustice: Lucas is accused of being a pedophile by Klara after he rejected her Precocious Crush on him. The whole town eventually turns on him as they harrass, assault, bully, and eventually kill his dog to punish him for this accusation. When Klara admits that she lied, Lucas's life seemingly goes back to normal until a stranger tries to kill him in the woods, presumably because they believe Lucas is still guilty of pedophilia.
• Villainous Cheekbones: Mads Mikkelsen's natural cheekbones help gives his character a villainous look in spite of the fact that he is innocent of the charges.
• The Voice: Lucas' ex, Kirsten. She is heard repeatedly on the phone, but never makes it on screen.
• Window Pain: Lucas gets a stone thrown into his kitchen window.
• Would Hurt a Child: Theo and the big blond guy get rough on Marcus, after the latter spits on Klara.
• You Can Always Tell a Liar: Theo mentions early on that he knows when Lucas is lying, he sees it in his eyes. When he's lying, he blinks; if he's not blinking, he's telling the truth. Lucas did not blink in the church while saying he's innocent. That's the moment Theo realizes his friend did not do what they accused him of. Cue a My God, What Have I Done? moment by Theo.
• You Monster!: Klara's mother says, "You're a sick man." Many of the villagers say a variation of this.

The stage adaptation includes many of the same tropes, as well as:

• Adaptation Name Change: Grethe the head teacher becomes Hilde, Theo's wife Agnes becomes Mikayla, Lucas's ex Kirsten is renamed Susannah, and Franny the dog gets a Gender Flip into Max. Klara's name is also respelled as Clara.
• Adapted Out: Nadja is removed from the story to emphasize Lucas's isolation. This is the target of a small Mythology Gag, when Clara scoffs at the idea of Lucas having a girlfriend.
  • Torsten is removed as well, and Clara appears to be an only child (though she's mentioned to have a cousin by the same name). Clara instead sees a pornographic video that her kindergarten classmate Peter found in the deleted files on a secondhand phone his father gave him to play games on.
  • Bruun and his family do not appear, probably for the same reason as Nadja. In addition, Lucas himself gets Bruun's name as his own last name.
  • Kirsten (renamed Susannah) is The Ghost; we hear Lucas's conversations with her on the phone but never her voice as in the film.
• Adaptational Alternate Ending: The play reaches more or less the same conclusion, but because Lucas's blinking tell when he's lying is never mentioned, Theo only realizes Lucas didn't molest Clara and the other children because he gets a frantic phone call from Mikayla explaining that Gunnar found the video on Peter's phone and that Clara based her description of Lucas exposing himself to her on it. The phone call in question comes when Theo has the barrel of Lucas's own hunting rifle shoved into Lucas's mouth and his finger on the trigger.
• Adaptational Wimp: Lucas is a much more passive and conflict-avoidant man in the play than he is in the film. He freezes up when given the opportunity to defend himself verbally and never fights back physically, though he does arm himself with his hunting rifle toward the climax.
• Ate His Gun: Theo nearly kills Lucas by forcing the barrel of Lucas's own hunting rifle into Lucas's mouth, presumably planning to make it look like Lucas committed suicide this way if Theo had gone through with it. Lucas is only saved by a timely phone call from Mikayla explaining that Gunnar found the video on Peter's phone and realized what had happened.
• Commonality Connection: Even before their respective lives begin to fall apart in the aftermath of her impulsive lie, Lucas notes that he and Clara are very similar people- they tend to bottle their feelings and avoid conflict. This is illustrated rather tragically when Clara is scared into reiterating her lie by the idea that she would be punished for making it up (or get Hilde into trouble for repeating something she'd made up), and when Lucas struggles to verbally defend himself. They also both separately cover their faces to avoid being seen crying.
• Dark Reprise: Rune's "This Is Our Country" was already pretty menacing, but when the entire adult cast (minus Lucas) reprise it later while surrounding Lucas with torches, the effect is terrifying.
  • Lucas quietly sings the hunting lodge's drinking song to himself while Drowning His Sorrows after being beaten up and thrown out of the lodge on Christmas Eve.
• Dysfunctional Family: As in the film, Clara's home life is not particularly stable, but it's far more emphasized in the play. Theo is The Alcoholic and struggles to hold down a job, Mikayla never does admit why she was late picking Clara up on that fateful Friday, and Clara has developed a bad case of OCD from trying to find consistency and order in her life. What makes Lucas finally snap at Theo in the end is Theo's accusation that Lucas brought chaos into Clara's life, to which Lucas furiously retorts that the chaos was already there and if anything, Clara's crush on him came from looking to him as a source of safety and stability.
  • Unlike in the film, it's also implied Mikayla isn't jealous of Lucas for being closer with Theo than she is— she's jealous of both Clara for being closer to Lucas and Lucas for being closer to Clara.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The film's final ambiguous moment remains, but everything blows over much faster in the play, and in particular Lucas has a much stronger reconciliation with Clara by helping carry her cross a room at the lodge that she's afraid to cross on her own. Clara also finally gets to kiss Lucas on the cheek, with him understanding it as the innocent gesture it is.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: The other characters frequently call Lucas out for being so stoic, it's hard to tell anything about him. This is one of the reasons they close ranks so quickly when he's Mistaken for Pedophile— they feel they never actually knew him well enough to know what he was or wasn't capable of.
  • Lucas, however, only holds this standard to himself. He hides his face from Marcus so he can't see that he's crying, but doesn't hesitate to hug and rock Marcus in his arms when Marcus breaks down too.
• Hidden Depths: Gunnar, Peter’s father, is a jovial and friendly man who is nevertheless the first to turn actively violent toward Lucas when he believes Lucas has harmed the children- but he’s also the one who immediately realizes what’s happened when he finds the porn video on the phone he gave Peter, and the only adult shown to fully and unambiguously trust Lucas and happily re-embrace him into the community after the Time Skip.
• Irony: Lucas spends much of the first scene of the play having to ask other adults- Gunnar, Mikayla, and Theo- to behave appropriately in his kindergarten classroom by not swearing or smoking in front of the kids. Lucas is then falsely accused of doing something even more inappropriate in the same classroom and hounded nearly to death for it by the same adults.
  • Lucas being a handsome single father who's excellent with kids is mentioned to have made him very popular with the town's women after his divorce. Once he's been accused, however, his singlehood is used as evidence that Loners Are Freaks. It's also what leads Clara to childishly believe she might have a chance with him, which sets the whole thing off, and implied to be part of why Mikayla so badly needs Lucas to have been guilty: her marriage to Theo isn't doing too well, and she's both jealous of Lucas having a good relationship with Clara while she struggles with motherhood and jealous that Clara gets to spend so much time with Lucas.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: Mikayla is flirtatious with Lukas when she arrives late to pick Clara up, greeting him with a sly "hello, handsome!", rubbing his chest, and cupping his head in her hands. Lukas has to gently remove her hands the same way he, only moments before, had to pull his hand back after Clara placed it on her own thigh. Mikayla is implied to be driven as much by a thwarted crush on Lucas as her daughter is.
• The Musical: Almost but not quite.
  • There are three (debatably five) diagetic songs: Rune the butcher sings a hymn called “This Is Our Country” while sharpening his instruments as Lucas walks home after being suspended from work, the lodge’s drinking song (which gets a joking reprise about Lucas’s youthful encounter with a doe he found too beautiful to shoot and a downplayed Dark Reprise when Lucas sings it to himself after being attacked on Christmas Eve), and the villagers sing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” at church^note using the Arthur Sullivan setting based on “Noel” most common outside of the US. None of these songs are presented as full-length musical numbers, but as short in-universe occurrences.
  • There are also two non-diagetic songs: a Dark Reprise of “This Is Our Country” as an Angry Mob Song and the fully staged ode to Danish masculinity performed by the adult male cast (minus Lucas) that opens the play. There are also a few symbolic dance sequences.
• Parental Substitute: Mikayla admits to Theo that part of what makes the perceived situation (that Lucas molested Clara) so awful is that Clara saw Lucas as this and preferred his company to hers and Theo's.
• Rule of Symbolism: Lucas is haunted throughout the play by figures wearing animal-skull headdresses, representing the barely suppressed ancient pagan warrior culture underlying the village's modern sensibilities that rises to the surface when he's accused of abusing the children. One of them is used to reveal Max's dead body to the audience, holding the poor dog wrapped in bloody blankets like a sacrificial offering.
  • After being dismissed from his job, Lucas encounters Rune the butcher sharpening his tools outdoors while singing an old pagan hymn about how the villagers will "meet every enemy with a sword in [their] hand[s]”. The song goes on to add that “every town has its witch, every parish its troll, and we will with pleasure bleed the life from their veins.” A vision of Clara appears on the word “witch”, suggesting that she, too, will be destroyed in the village’s efforts to hunt down Lucas, the “troll”.
  • After the fight in the church, Lucas is symbolically surrounded by the rest of the adults in the village carrying torches and singing the same hymn Rune did earlier as Lucas buries Max’s body. The Pædo Hunt has become a Witch Hunt.
  • Theo tells the men of the village a story about a time he and Lucas went hunting as young men where Lucas- who's noted to be an excellent hunter- was so moved by a beautiful doe that instead of shooting her, he put down his gun and went to pet her, and she allowed it. The following Monday after Theo tells the story, Lucas mentions waking up to find another doe grazing outside of his bedroom window. Innocent creatures feel instinctively safe around him, despite what the town comes to believe about him.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Lucas and Theo's friendship in a nutshell. Theo is swaggering, hot-tempered, and stereotypically masculine to a fault, while Lucas is withdrawn, conflict-avoidant, easily overwhelmed, and great with kids. This is played with, however, with many people reading Lucas's quiet and sensitive nature as closed-off and icy, as well as Lucas apparently being a terrific shot with a rifle and Theo being pretty lousy at it.
  • Ironically, Marcus is the Sensitive Guy to Lucas's Manly Man. Marcus praises his dad for being "ice cool" and openly cries in front of him, while Lucas does everything he can to hide his own tears from Marcus.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Hilde tells Lucas (pre-accusation, of course) that multiple women in the village are interested in him, to the point of having written notes to Hilde asking for an introduction to him after he helped with the school's harvest festival.

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