Mickey Reece is a filmmaker who, despite having made over 20 movies, has only had one theatrically released. It’s a bit of a sad irony how the timing worked out for Climate of the Hunter, initially screening at Fantastic Fest in 2019 before being delayed until theaters opened up in December last year. But in that messiness, it feels like it got a little lost, like so many great indie films did in the foggy COVID release landscape, though a new streaming home on Shudder has brought it more attention.
Climate of the Hunter, as the title suggests, is an examination of predatory men, personified in the film by Wesley, played with a sinister charm by Ben Hall. Two sisters make up the bulk of the rest of the characters, Alma (Ginger Gilmartin), a woman discharged from a mental institution an unspecified time ago, and Elizabeth (Mary Buss), who works in D.C. as a lawyer. Alma has retired to the family vacation home for the last two years, mostly to get high with her paranoid mountain man neighbor BJ (Jacob Ryan Snovel). Elizabeth arrives for a visit and to see Wesley, unaware of quite how long her sister has been here. The trio are in their late forties or early fifties, two with children of their own. Elizabeth is the childless one, though she ironically practices family law, something that Alma is quick to remind her of when Elizabeth wants to get snippy. The two sisters bicker as only siblings can, over everything: Wesley, Alma’s mental health, Elizabeth’s coldness, aging, and of course, whether or not vampires exist and whether or not Wesley is one.
Calling this film anti-horror is not an inaccurate description, though genre fans will certainly have plenty of moments to enjoy, especially a psychedelic dream sequence where Alma converses with a Nosferatu-like creature and is attacked by a Technicolor bat. Reece isn’t interested in horror through an elitist lens like some anti-horror filmmakers are. He’s a student of the vampire genre, citing the similarly melodrama-inspired Daughters of Darkness as the film’s primary inspiration. Reece has transfixed the setting from that film’s gothic Germany to a cloudy Oklahoma winter, and the central vampire from elegant lesbian into an aging would-be bachelor, despite a wife, Geneive (Laurie Cummings), who isn’t dead, but resides in a mental institution. His son Percy is quick to remind him of his role in that, though the truth of his accusations remains unclear, providing the film’s biggest suggestions outside of Alma’s head that Wesley isn’t a human, as Percy makes vague references to his father having a dark curse or living forever.
Alma’s unsure for most of the film if Wesley is a vampire or not, and in many ways, the audience is with her. “Of course you can’t just walk into a room like anyone else,” Elizabeth says when Wesley arrives for dinner by quoting poetry through an open window. And Wesley is invited in, as a vampire must be, with open arms and eager eyes from both sisters.
The dynamic between the trio seems to be that Wesley always pined for Alma and Elizabeth for Wesley when they were younger, and now that Wesley has returned, his focus could go for either sister. He flirts in a way that allows him to hold power over these women, being overtly romantic to one sister while subtly doing it to the other, essentially forcing them into a position of competition. Both seem game until Alma begins to grow suspicious of Wesley’s behavior, and when her favorite conspiracy theorist, BJ, presents the idea that his predatory nature could be that of a vampire, she jumps at it.
The central question here, truly, isn’t if Wesley is a vampire or not, but if there is such a difference between two monsters, between a toxic man and a vampire. His rants and raves about his “beautiful curse” could be vampirism, certainly, but it could also be describing masculinity, especially of the ’70s/’80s variety when the film is set. A “beautiful” curse that allows the owner to commit crimes, often against women, and escape into the night. The connection between vampires and predatory men is not a new one, dating back to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but here it is brought to the forefront.
Alma’s daughter is introduced towards the last third of the film. Rose (Danielle Evon Ploeger) is concerned about her mother’s wellbeing, but is confrontational in her attempts to help her, harboring resentment that seems not entirely unfounded. Both Percy and Rose seem worried about becoming like their parents; Percy is a writer like his father, and Rose was addicted to drugs for a few years and seemingly has some mental health issues like her mother. They both resent their parents and judge them harshly throughout the film.
Recurring dinner scenes give the film a loose structure, each introduced with a glitzy overhead shot of the food they’ll be eating and a narration naming the dishes. Rose is introduced to Wesley during one of these scenes and immediately something in him shifts into a higher register. His eyes linger on her far too long and his flirting becomes much more assertive and pointed towards the new, young member of this party. He envisions her in ways romantic and predatory, topless at the dinner table and kissing in a pool of white light as the mostly silent narrator confirms this is what he has been waiting for, essentially. His fantasies are dashed abruptly back to reality when the film cuts to Elizabeth staring at Wesley, licking her lips, entrapped. Like most predators, he has multiple people picked out to victimize.
First, he takes a moonlit walk with Elizabeth, where she finally acts on her feelings by sucking on his fingers erotically to Wesley’s befuddled approval. Her return to the vacation home sparks a fight between Alma, who accuses her of not taking her concerns about Wesley’s vampirism seriously, to which Elizabeth essentially responds “of course not.” Rose leaves during this kerfuffle to visit Wesley and bluntly asks him about his relationship with her mother and the way he was looking at her at dinner. He says he was staring and makes a non-apology for it before insisting he did not sleep with Alma as “the fates did not smile on us that way,” i.e., she wasn’t interested. What follows is a blur between a nightmare Alma is having and Wesley kissing Rose. Somewhere in between those two worlds, Wesley’s kiss turns into a bite, his predatory love into a predatory feeding. And then Alma is waking up and we’re left wondering where the dream ended and the film began, and if they’re not one and the same.
This is not the only depiction of Wesley’s sexuality as monstrous. A final dinner scene (“roast chicken with pastry and deviled eggs with shrimp garnish”) is a date night between Wesley and Elizabeth, and much to Elizabeth’s surprise, Geneive, who Wesley parades around in a glitzy dress. He’s released her from the institution under the guise that she can walk now, but it becomes apparent she is here because he wants Elizabeth to understand that the women in his life are interchangeable and, ultimately, disposable. Elizabeth tries to play along, but this power play overwhelms her and Wesley escorts her to the bedroom swiftly.
There Elizabeth becomes uncomfortable again, first at Wesley’s aggressive advances, and then when she sees Genevieve watching from the kitchen and realizes this is also a humiliation ritual for his old wife. Wesley refuses to take no for an answer, telling Elizabeth she is to blame for whatever happens because she came here, before biting into her neck.
The visual metaphor of sexual assault becoming a vampiric feeding is both a shield and a truth. It’s a shield in how it protects the audience from having to witness a more traditional sexual assault scene, turning it into something also awful but made more palatable through familiar genre tropes. It still remains an effective metaphor, the destructive nature of sexual assault constructed as a monstrous attack and how it feeds into a certain kind of assaulter’s ego or his idea of himself as a man.
Wesley is consumed with his own self-image, styling himself very specifically and memorizing poetry to recite to a woman he wants to ensnare. To him, these sexual assaults or vampiric feedings are conquests, notches on his bedpost, locker room talk. When Alma confronts Wesley about her suspicions soon after this, she vocalizes the metaphor: “You drank her blood because that’s what you do. That’s exactly what you do.”
Pinned, Wesley goes on the offence, sputtering and insulting Alma until she’s had enough and plunges the stake she’s brought into his chest. Elizabeth appears, distraught over her sister finally going too far, at least from her perspective. Because Wesley isn’t a vampire, probably. He’s a rapist and a creep, a toxic, predatory hunter of a man, but a man, it seems in the end. “I know that what I feel is real,” Alma says when she confronts him, and in a sense, it is. He is a threat, he is dangerous, he’s just not a vampire. He’s a man.
Laura Riordan does not exist. She is, however, on Twitter at ernst_lubitch where you can find her posts about director's filmographies and some okay memes. She lives in Maine with two cats and an indeterminable amount of kitchen appliances and physical media.
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