Late last summer, “The Hunt,” a mean little horror/satire from the clever devils at Blumhouse, looked like a culture war casualty. The movie’s fanciful premise — that a bunch of blue-state Americans were killing some of their red-state fellow citizens for sport — upset a few people who hadn’t seen it and who may have been looking for something to get upset about. Can you imagine: A liberal Hollywood blueprint for anti-conservative violence!

You can’t, because it isn’t. As a rule, movies take the side of the prey, not the predators, and American liberalism survives partly by poking fun at its own. After mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso inflamed the political atmosphere even further, Universal decided to postpone the release of “The Hunt,” a response that dovetails, oddly enough, with a plot point involving corporate reactions to politically uncomfortable “optics.” There’s also a lot in the movie about how online hysteria bleeds into reality, which makes it seem at once prescient and redundant

Now that we are all freaking out about other things, “The Hunt” can be seen for what it is: an almost-successful attempt to do for class and ideology what Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” (also a Blumhouse production) did for racism. That’s the setup, anyway, and to say much more about the twists and turns that follow would be to ruin a few surprises...

Whew.....That’s reassuring, Billy.

And a final $20 film viewing: The Invisible Man. Could not look away from the huge helping of Elisabeth Moss. I don’t find her particularly attractive....and she wasn’t trying to be for most of the movie. It wasn’t a great movie.....but it was a distraction.....and all the new releases will have to be streamed I guess.

Bart.....I don’t think you should watch The Lighthouse as it turns a normally intelligent man into a goofball.....