The Dayton shooter, whose name I will not use, fantasized about hunting for humans. According to former friend Ian Himes, the shooter was a meth head who called himself a “sociopath.” He would also take Himes’s journals and scrawl his chilling fantasies in them.

He wrote things like this:

“Their screams music, their pain my pleasure. May the night reign eternal.”

“The light forever eclipsed. A champion of wrath, predatory state, to hunt and kill my greatest escape.”

What’s more, the shooter also wrote about a plan to go “hunting” at the nearby University of Dayton:

“Bro, we should go to a weekend @ UD geeked AF & see if we can’t go hunting. Ya know lol, f*ck yeah I’m down, ya know lol LMAO.” 

“We take a bitch, a person, man, convince them to come with us then poof, gone lol down?” 

Why Ian Himes never bothered to report the shooter to police is beyond me. Whatever happened to “if you see something, say something”?

Meanwhile, in Tinsel Town, other people thought it’d be a great idea to release a movie about hunting humans. Entitled The Hunt, the film focuses on wealthy people hunting less affluent Americans, which is skin-crawling enough. Not my idea of something I’d like to see, but that theme isn’t new. In 1932, The Most Dangerous Game told the story of a nobleman who hunted humans on his private island.  The Naked Prey, from 1966, is about a safari guide whom African tribesmen hunt down in the wild, which would undoubtedly be labeled as “racist” these days. A recent variation of this theme is The Hunger Games, from 2012, in which teenagers fight to the death in a dystopian society.

However, what makes The Hunt different is that this film is politically super-charged. Here the privileged elites hunt down twelve Americans — “deplorables” — in what is billed as a “dark satire.”

Here’s the official trailer, in case you missed it:

But the film companies Blumhouse and Universal, which are responsible for this delightful bit of cinema, have decided to halt marketing of The Hunt, which they’re still releasing on September 27. Out of respect for the recent shootings, of course.

“Out of sensitivity to the attention on the country’s recent shooting tragedies, Universal Pictures and the filmmakers of ‘The Hunt’ have temporarily paused its marketing campaign and are reviewing materials as we move forward.”

Well, isn’t that special. Never mind that this film depicts conservatives as less than human. It’s because the timing is, as they say, “too soon.”

Credit: giphy.com.

However, Snopes assures us that The Hunt doesn’t necessarily “show liberals hunting Trump supporters,” even though the film was originally titled Red State Vs. Blue State. 

“Without having confirmation of those important details or being able to watch “The Hunt,” we cannot confirm the accuracy of the claim that the movie features “liberal” or “left-wing” characters hunting “Trump supporters” for sport.”

So says Snopes, which keeps fact-checking the hilarious satire site Babylon Bee.

But even conservative pundit Greg Gutfeld finds this whole kerfuffle to be “much ado about nothing.”

“This is an old idea, the most dangerous game. There’s a lot of movies about hunting humans and we have no idea who becomes victorious in this. This is a satire.”

“I think we immediately go, ‘oh my God, they’re hunting conservatives.’ I guarantee you the conservative will probably win and that’s the twist in this. So I think this is much ado about nothing.”

He’s right about this being an “old idea,” of course, and rumor has it that the film does conclude with the “deplorables” winning. But The Hunt is also another indication of what Hollywood thinks of conservatives and especially Trump supporters: mockable, a stereotype — drawling rubes who are lower on the evolutionary scale.

Should The Hunt be permanently canned? No, of course not. The producers have every right to put forth this dreck with the intent of making big bucks on it. Moreover, I could see the box office opening strongly due to the controversy, but quickly petering out. There’s precedent for that too: in 2018, the movie Assassination Nation, with similar political themes, fizzled rapidly. That folly left execs scratching their heads. “We thought people would get the joke,” said one.

But when you insult about half the nation, especially those in “Flyover Country,” why does Hollywood keep thinking audiences would shell out money for this stuff? Keep it up, Tinsel Town — you want Trump? This is how you get more Trump.

One final question: if The Hunt inspires another shooter like the Dayton killer to go “hunting,” should we blame the film’s producers for those deaths, just like the media and progressives blame conservatives for El Paso?

Featured image: Alex Andrews/pexels/cropped/free for use.