The only psycho in silly Winnipeg-filmed thriller is the screenwriter

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This article was published 16/12/2021 (1366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While it was being cobbled together in Winnipeg in the chilly winter of 2017, the movie now known as Night Hunter was shot under the working title Nomis.

Night Hunter feels a little more like a generic serial killer thriller. And now that the movie is widely viewable on Netflix this week, we can see that is apt.

Writer-director David Raymond, who made his feature debut here, aspires to something a little more twisted than usual in this story of hard-bitten homicide cop Marshall (Henry Cavill) out to solve the murder of a young woman who, we see in the prologue, had unsuccessfully tried to evade the psychotic individual who had kept her prisoner.

It becomes clear that the perp is a serial killer. The madman’s path soon crosses with that of the impudent teen Lara (Eliana Jones), who happens to be partnered with mad vigilante Cooper (Ben Kingsley).

Cooper was once a judge before a personal tragedy sent him off the deep end, and he employs Lara to entice sexual predators. Lara is kidnapped, but thanks to Cooper’s surveillance tech, the cops track her to a mansion (hello, Ralph Connor House) where the psycho has been enjoying his twisted games in privacy.

Unfortunately, the only man in the house is Simon (Brendan Fletcher), who appears to be developmentally disabled and thus incapable of the killer’s fiendish ingenuity. This is demonstrated when cops start becoming targets of the killer’s wrath, even while Simon is clearly in custody.

Marshall believes Simon is acting, leaving profiler Rachel (Alexandra Daddario) to try her best to break the cryptic, unhinged Simon before the body count rises, or police commissioner Harper (Stanley Tucci) pops a blood vessel.

No question: This is a silly movie. It’s amazing so many name actors — Cavill, Kingsley, Daddario, Tucci and Nathan Fillion in a throwaway part — participated. Perhaps it looked better on the page. More likely: Some mortgage payments were coming due. Certainly, this explains Kingsley’s participation, given his increasingly eccentric line readings throughout the film.

It does have a few interesting set pieces, including a climax on a frozen pond involving incendiary tennis balls.

The characters, alas, aren’t quite so unique. Cavill, who played Superman and Man from UNCLE’s Napolean Solo before this, just seems to be fulfilling a need to play an original, albeit conventional cop character. The question for him, and ultimately for prospective audiences, is: Why bother?

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Manitoba doubles for a Midwest city, and as with many a locally shot film, some of the pleasures of the film are watching local actors mix it up with the stars. Notably, stage vets Cory Wojcik and Tom Keenan get some juicy bits playing a couple of pervy predators, Frank Adamson chills as a suspiciously omnipresent witness, Beverly Ndukwu is quietly assertive as one of those computer geniuses who can find a suspect with a minimum of keystrokes, and Lauren Cochrane gets a (much-needed) chuckle as an offended waitress.­

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