THE HUNTED

"The Hunted" doesn’t rush to judge its characters, and that restraint is what gives it its quiet power. In just 24 minutes, Josh Herum manages to excavate a very specific modern anxiety — not the fear of apocalypse itself, but the fear of being left behind by a world that refuses to collapse on schedule. This is a short film less interested in catastrophe than in the psychology of waiting for one, and the slow corrosion that waiting can cause.

At its centre is John, a man who doesn’t feel extreme so much as exhausted. His decision to abandon everything and attach himself to an off-the-grid commune doesn’t play as reckless fantasy, but as a last, fragile attempt at clarity. The appeal of Gary — a charismatic conspiracy evangelist preaching the “True Way” — isn’t presented as villainous bravado. Instead, it’s the seduction of certainty. Gary offers answers, structure, and purpose in a world that feels increasingly shapeless, and The Hunted understands just how intoxicating that can be.

What the film captures with unnerving accuracy is the emotional limbo of belief. Not belief as fanaticism, but belief as investment. Once you’ve given up your old life, once you’ve tied your identity to an idea of impending collapse, what happens when nothing happens? Herum is acutely interested in that gap — the silence between predictions and reality — and how it breeds paranoia. The longer the world stubbornly carries on, the more belief has to mutate to survive. Doubt becomes a threat. Questions become betrayals. Certainty hardens into control.

The power dynamic between leader and follower is handled with real care. There’s no grand ideological showdown, no theatrical descent into madness. Instead, tension builds through glances, withheld information, and the subtle tightening of emotional space. The commune itself begins to feel less like a refuge and more like a psychological enclosure — not because of overt cruelty, but because fear has quietly rewritten the rules of trust. Survival, once framed as collective protection, starts to feel uncomfortably selective.

What’s most impressive is how character-driven the film remains throughout. The thriller elements are present, but never at the expense of interiority. This is a story about how isolation amplifies belief, how devotion can curdle when it’s no longer reinforced by reality, and how easily purpose can turn predatory when it’s built on unprovable futures. The film doesn’t mock the prepper mindset, nor does it romanticise it. It simply observes, listens, and lets the emotional consequences speak for themselves.

There’s a raw honesty to The Hunted that feels particularly timely. In an age where online personalities can construct entire worlds of belief through screens and slogans, the film understands how quickly ideology can become intimate. Gary’s influence isn’t abstract — it’s personal, daily, invasive. And John’s internal conflict isn’t about rejecting belief outright, but about recognising the cost of maintaining it when it no longer aligns with lived experience.

By the time the film reaches its conclusion, the title feels painfully apt. Not because of literal pursuit, but because everyone involved is chasing something — safety, meaning, validation — and slowly realising that what they’re hunting may never have existed in the first place. The Hunted lingers because it refuses easy answers. It asks uncomfortable questions about faith, authority, and the human need for certainty, and it does so with empathy rather than accusation.

It’s a short film that trusts its audience to sit with discomfort, to recognise fragments of our own fractured relationship with truth and belonging. And in doing so, it becomes something far more unsettling than a simple cautionary tale. It’s a quiet, unsettling mirror — and one that’s difficult to look away from.