Critical The Hunting Ground has received acclaim from film critics.
Rotten Tomatoes indicated that 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 73 reviews, with an
average score of 7.8/10. Its consensus reads: "
The Hunting Ground isn't director Kirby Dick's strongest work as a filmmaker, but the movie's powerful message more than trumps any technical weaknesses." At
Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 77, considered to be "generally favorable," based on 29 reviews. It would was billed by the
Sundance Film Festival as a "piercing, monumental
exposé of
rape culture on campuses". Eric Kohn, on
Indiewire, gave the film a B+ grade, describing it as a "stirring call to action".
Entertainment Weekly praised the film for its strong emotional impact.
David Edelstein, writing for
New York, advised parents to watch it before sending their children to college. A columnist for the
Philanthropy Journal predicted that, more than any other Sundance film in 2015, the film had the potential to affect activism and social policy. While most reviews were positive,
Variety film critic,
Ella Taylor accused
The Hunting Ground of "shoddy journalism" and called it a "loaded piece of agitprop that plays fast and loose with statistics and our sympathy with victims of campus sexual assault".
Accolades The Hunting Ground was nominated for the "Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Picture" award by the
Producers Guild of America, but lost to
Amy. On December 1, 2015, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that
The Hunting Ground was one of the fifteen documentary films shortlisted for an
Oscar nomination in the
Best Documentary Feature category, but it failed to make the final list of five nominees announced on January 14, 2016. In December 2015, the film won the 2016
Stanley Kramer Award given to "a production, producer or other individual whose achievement or contribution illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues."
The Hunting Ground was also one of the five movies nominated in the Documentary category of 2016
MTV Movie Awards.
Political On February 26, 2015, one day before the theatrical release of the film, a bipartisan group of twelve U.S. Senators, accompanied by the film's lead subjects, Annie Clark and Andrea Pino, reintroduced the
Campus Accountability and Safety Act. The act, originally introduced in July 2014, would require universities to adopt standard practices for weighing sexual assault charges, and to survey students on the prevalence of assault. New York governor
Andrew Cuomo presented the film at the
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on June 2, 2015, to promote, and help pass, new legislation to address sexual assault at New York institutions of higher learning. At the screening, Cuomo called the movie "an extraordinary documentary that really publicized this issue…and show how institutions were slow to respond."
California Senator Barbara Boxer responded to the film by saying "The power on that
status quo side, you're going to see it in response to this film. Believe me, there will be fallout."
The Harvard Crimson criticized the film for misrepresenting sexual assault statistics and other details. The
Crimson article also charged that the film's creators had included excerpts of a fake video—created as a prank for the student comedy group
On Harvard Time—showing a female Harvard applicant vomiting upon learning she had been accepted to the university. Writing for
New York Magazine, Jesse Singal criticized the film's use of statistics from a controversial research paper by Dr.
David Lisak, stating that the paper's claims were inaccurate and had little support from other academics. However, the same statistic was used in the
Harvard Law Review article
Uncomfortable Conversations: Confronting the Reality of Target Rape on Campus by Diane L. Rosenfeld, the Founding Director of the Gender Violence Program and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School (128 Harv. L. Rev. F. 359). An additional controversy surrounded emails sent by producer Amy Herdy trying to solicit interviews for the film, in which Herdy stated that
The Hunting Ground was "very much in the corner of advocacy for victims, so there would be no insensitive questions or the need to get the perpetrator's side." Herdy's email said that the filmmakers wanted the alleged perpetrator to "get complacent because then we will ambush him." In response, the filmmakers stated that the singling out of those emails was a diversionary tactic to take attention away from the failings of college administrators and discredit the filmmakers. The producers posted an online response to this criticism. In a statement emailed to
The Harvard Crimson, the film's director and producer, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, criticized the law professors' letter, saying it was "irresponsible and raises an important question about whether the very public bias these professors have shown in favor of an assailant contributes to a hostile climate at Harvard Law".
Jeannie Suk, one of nineteen Harvard Law professors to sign the letter, told the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education that filmmaker's comment "exemplifies the reckless way some people use the concept of a hostile environment these days", and later tweeted "if actually accused of violating Title IX because of our criticism of @thehuntinground we will not be allowed to speak about that". Suk later wrote that there have been several inquiries about filing a Title IX complaint and likened the misuse of Title IX to
Laura Kipnis' experience. Professor Janet E. Halley, a signatory to the original letter, disputed Dick and Zeiring's statement, saying "
The Hunting Ground has profoundly misled the public about the ensuing processes which came out decisively against those claims".
Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) President
John Thrasher said that
The Hunting Ground "contains major distortions and glaring omissions to support its simplistic narrative that colleges and universities are to blame for our national sexual assault crisis." The filmmakers contended in response that Thrasher "just didn't want the film to be seen because it criticizes FSU for their handling of a sexual assault case." On November 20, 2015, lawyers for
Jameis Winston sent a letter to CNN president
Jeff Zucker threatening legal action against the network, should it air the film. Despite warnings from Winston's attorneys, CNN ran the documentary on November 22, along with a follow-up program, hosted by
Alisyn Camerota, discussing the film and the issues it raised. CNN's airing of
The Hunting Ground was a moderate ratings success, with 457,000 estimated viewers. CNN ranked first among cable news networks during ''The Hunting Ground's'' time slot in the 25–54
demographic, and placed second for total viewers. ==Awards and nominations==