After debuting this year at SXSW, Annick Blanc’s Jour de Chasse makes its debut back home north of the border at this year’s edition of Fantasia. Aiming for a mixture of environmental menace with drug-fuelled paranoia and toxic masculinity, Hunting Daze (its English title) isn’t the horror, mystery thriller it’s been touted as. Much more of a dark drama that falls apart into chaos in the third act, what saves Hunting Daze from dropping completely into mediocrity is a galvanising performance from the stellar Nahema Ricci.

After being stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, sex worker Nina (Ricci) is rescued from peril by a hunting group that she had performed for the night earlier. Playing the group are accomplished Quebec talents Marc Beaupre, Maxime Genois, Alexandre Landry, Frederic Millaire-Zouvi, and Bruno Marcil. The men accept her into their group, reluctantly. But after the group finally bonds over drunken hunting shenanigans, another mysterious stranger appears which threatens to throw all the dynamics askew.

At first, you feel that this film will derive its drama from the single beautiful female being dropped into a group of horny men, as we have seen many times, but refreshingly the way she is naturally accepted is very reassuring to see. That may be credited more to the take-no-shit attitude that permeates Ricci’s portrayal of Nina. And while the rest of the cast does have their moments, it’s the overpowering presence of Ricci on screen that steals this show. Sadly the script meanders a lot in the third act as the film loses focus, only to land on what I anticipate will be a divisive ending. But man is Nahema Ricci a damn star.