The Archer

There are a lot of positive aspects to The Archer. There’s a lot of negative aspects, too. Overall, The Archer bit off way, way, way more than it could chew.

The Archer’s title and poster is trying to court some Hunger Games cast-off audience. But that’s not what the film is. It’s about Lauren, a teenager with anger issues. Lauren has great talent for competitive archery. After winning a championship, Lauren and her friend Emily begin kissing. But Emily’s abusive boyfriend interrupts this experimentation. Lauren snaps and beats the crap out of him, landing him in the hospital. So, Lauren gets arrested. Lauren and her mother expect a light sentence for the incident. Instead, Lauren is sent to a reform camp for an indeterminate amount of time. She soon learns how corrupt this camp and the justice system is. After bonding with another girl of similar age named Rebecca, the two girls escape. But the camp owner, Bob and his pervy son, Michael are more than happy to hunt the girls for sport.

The big issue I have with The Archer is tone. I have no idea what tone they were going for. The teen girl who does archery gives this a YA audience vibe. But the degrading and abusive prison suggests maybe exploitation made for an older audience. Through all of this, there’s a passionate critique of the justice system especially in regards to minor offenders. Except the whole people hunted for sport thing rather undermines said critique. The Archer does not lack for ideas; it does lack in follow-through and focus, though.

Judging by the film’s ending subtitles, its primary purpose is to draw attention to the exploitation of children within the justice system. I don’t know why this isn’t the sole focus. There’s enough there to fill a film. Maybe there were concerns about entertainment value? Because abused and exploited children isn’t entertaining. But of course, adding in more entertaining elements like over the top bad guys and the whole hunted for sport thing drags down the critique element. It ends up feeling like the abuse and exploitation of minor offenders is also part of the entertainment aspect. This is a classier depiction of prison than most female incarnation flicks. But it still hits a lot of the same beats as those films without enough intelligence or focus to elevate such aspects.

I expected the lesbianism to feel exploitative. But for the most part, it isn’t. Like much of The Archer, this aspect caters to an indeterminate audience. But overall, I think Lauren’s queerness is meant to humanize her. Because this is a female incarceration film, I expected minimal lesbian content of questionable consent. Instead, there is a sweet and balanced dynamic between Lauren and Rebecca. They definitely bond due to trauma. But it is handled fairly sensitively and never gets too gratuitous. They do stop to kiss a few too many times while being actively hunted. But hey, if they didn’t I’d probably critique the film for not being overtly queer enough.

I had expectations of The Archer being a cheap Hunger Games knockoff. It wasn’t. Based on the plot summary about juvenile detention, I expected a women in prison exploitation film. It wasn’t that either. The Archer’s actual identity as a film is a bit muddy. It’s about 50% simple thriller about girls being hunted in the woods. The remaining 50% is a basic but passionate attempt to critique the justice system. Sadly, the former aspect undermines the second aspect quite a lot. But, had this been two separate movies, one a simple thriller and one a prison critique, I think both would have been successful. It’s just in the smooshing them together that the problem lies.

Overall rating: 5.2/10

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