The Hunter's Anthology: You've All Done Bad Things, But Which Of You is a Demon?

 

The Hunter's Anthology, on Amazon Prime: Some people are trapped on the subway by the Hunter, who claims that they are demons.  Sounds interesting.

Scene 1: The Hunter (Taylor August) is dressed like the Man with No Name in an old Clint Eastwood movie, with a brown leather jacket, a square hat, and cowboy boots.   

No beefcake pictures of Taylor August because he shares his name with a porn actress, so google searches are impossible.  He works primarily in North Carolina.

We watch the boots as he walks the mean streets of New York and descends into the subway. Rod, a white middle-class guy in a business suit, stares at him, then looks away, then tries to make eye contact with Tabitha, a white middle-class woman.  Hunter stares at both of them.  

Rod is played by Eric Colton, who was the lead actor in the LGBTQ series Swell.

Finally the subway arrives.  Ok, now we have some racial representation: there's also a nervous-looking black guy (Cole Taylor, below) and a suspicious looking Hispanic woman.  They all play the "stare at you, and when you stare back, quickly look away" game.  

A white middle class heterosexual couple get on (the man is played by Olev Aleksander, below).  Everyone stares at them.

Suddenly the subway stops, and the lights go out.  They reassure each other: "It will probably start up in a minute."  Funny -- there are no passengers in the other cars, and the doors are jammed.  They're trapped!

Eventually the Hunter explains: one of them is a demon,, which he has to send back to Hell with a silver-tipped stake.  He can't tell which, because they've all had paranormal experiences and done bad things.  Which one has "a soul of absolute darkness"?  He'll have to take a peek into their souls to find out. The bad Clint Eastwood impression is becoming annoying, Dude. Tone it down a bit. 

I get it.  Every episode will be a peek into a different person's soul.

Soul 1, "The Fortune Maker": New York in the rain.  Tabitha, the woman from the platform, desparately knocks on a fortune teller's door: "We're closed!  Come back at 8:30!"  Funny, I never thought of fortune tellers working in the morning.  

"It's an emergency! I need to see the future!"  "I have plans this evening!"  Funny, I never thought of fortune tellers going out to movies and restaurants

Fortune teller relents.  Very disappointing shop, just a table and a blue curtain.  Tabitha has a feeling of impending doom, and wants a Tarot card reading to figure it out.  

The Tarot reading seems to go on forever, as Tabitha keeps interrupting with stories of friends who visited and got monkey's paw-style advice.   The gist: a guy at the gym keeps asking Tabitha out, and she keeps refusing.  She also sees him in other places around town.  Could he be a threat?  

After some ruminating, the fortune teller agrees: "violent passion, misunderstanding of love."  He's a predator! In fact, he plans to kill you!  You have a decision to make. Uh-oh, Tabitha's going to kill him, and no doubt he's innocent.

Tabitha doesn't want to leave while it's still raining, so to pass the time, she offers to do a Tarot reading for the Fortune Teller.  I thought that Tarot readers never let anyone else handle their cards -- loss of spiritual energy or something.  

Turning sinister and arrogant, Tabitha does the reading: abuse of power, misfortune, pain, death.  She intersplices stories of all those friends who took the Fortune Teller's advice -- they all had their lives ruined. And Fortune Teller wasn't just predicting -- she was interfering to make her predictions come true. She even murdered someone, who happened to be Tabitha's sister!

The guy at the gym story was fake, to get Tabitha in the door.  She really came for revenge!  She  conjures an army of zombies to eat the Fotune Teller.  

Back to the subway:  They discuss whether Tabitha's act was justified: murder of a murderer.  But surely she's just a psychic, not a demon, right?  Mac says he won't know until he looks into everyone's soul.  Makes sense -- if the demon happens to be Person #2, the series would end.  Are we going to guess?

Beefcake: No.  A couple of the guys are cute, but this is very low-budget, with minimal settings.  A subway car and a table surrounded by a blue curtain.  Not even any props.

Gay Characters: Two of the guys express heterosexual interest; the third guy doesn't, but the night is young.

Boredom:  The first Tarot reading took forever.  Not enough clues that the stories Tabitha told were important.

Plot Twist:  I didn't realize that Tabitha's story was fake until she turned sinister.

Will I Keep Watching:  Not bad for a low-budget series. I'll probably check out the episodes with male characters, to see if there are any gay subtexts.

Update: The male characters are all straight.