Critics reviews

The old saying that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts, applies. The problem is not that Ziering and Dick have an axe to grind; that is the nature of advocacy filmmaking, and every film has an angle, vérité included. It's that they throw dubious statistics at us as facts and offer next to no counter-testimony in an area where, because it's one person's word against another's, solid evidence is notoriously hard to tease out.

There's a dicey feeling of familiarity to Dick's new film, a sense of footage fitting into pre-existing slots, that risks weakening its undisputable notion that these women's traumas need to be heard as individual experiences. Instead of putting a human face on appalling statistics, the faces are starting to look like just more quantifiable evidence for an audiovisual advocacy project.

A blunt instrument of a movie, its power largely derives from the many young women and some men recounting on camera how they were raped at their schools and then subsequently denied justice by those same schools. Their stories — delivered in sorrow and rage, with misting eyes and squared jaws — make this imperfect movie a must-watch work of cine-activism, one that should be seen by anyone headed to college and by those already on campus.

At a moment in which stories of campus rape are echoing across the media, The Hunting Ground is the most cogent and comprehensive look yet at how it happens and is mishandled on a systemic level... The Hunting Ground isn't starting this conversation, but it will go far in framing the debate.

The filmmakers take a restrained, standard-issue approach that feels attuned to the interviewees' traumatizing experiences while also being limiting — the subject matter may not lend itself to an overtly ambitious aesthetic, but a film about individuals who refuse to be silenced could stand to take a few more chances itself.

The Hunting Ground engages in pragmatic and honorable agitprop. One wishes the film were both long and bold enough to explore the legal issues and cultural crosscurrents swirling around it.

This sort of doc is a legal minefield, but it never seems to sacrifice urgency or cogency, although like Dick's previous films, it may irk those who prefer a wonkier, less button-pushing approach. Tech credits, showcasing skillful editing of an impressive amount of material, are consistent with the director's usual polish, though the inclusion of an original song from Diane Warren and Lady Gaga — with the unfortunate title "Till It Happens to You" — seems tacky.