The Hateful Eight (2015)

A snowfield in Wyoming, not long after the end of the Civil War. To escape a fierce blizzard, eight strangers gather in a lone cabin. Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film, The Hateful Eight, unspools 168 minutes within this confined space. It wears the look of a Western but plays out closer to a locked-room mystery, where dialogue piles up before gunfire and suspicion before incident. As much as it demands patience, it is a film that rewards that patience with an explosion.

What it’s about — A probing standoff among eight people trapped in a cabin

Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), while transporting the condemned prisoner Daisy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the gallows, picks up two passengers in the blizzard: another bounty hunter, Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and Chris (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the new sheriff. When heavy snow blocks the road, the party stops at an isolated cabin called Minnie’s Haberdashery. Four men of unknown identity are already lodged there. Ruth suspects one of them belongs to a gang plotting to free Daisy, and within the cramped cabin, mutual probing, lies, and hidden identities slowly come to a boil.

Direction — Trapping a 70mm widescreen inside a single cabin

Tarantino shot this film on 70mm. The large format once used to capture vast landscapes he uses, paradoxically, confined to the interior of a single cabin. He arranges several characters at once within the wide frame and keeps the audience constantly checking who is watching what, and from where. This visual tension is what props up the static stretches of Chapters One and Two, where the dialogue runs long.

The construction is closer to theater. It divides into chapters, reilluminates an event shown from one viewpoint from another viewpoint, and belatedly reveals who is telling the truth and who is concocting a lie. Ennio Morricone’s score lays down ominous tension in place of Western romance, making the whole cabin feel like one enormous trap. The 168-minute length is undeniably demanding, and the slow pace up to the midpoint will inevitably split opinion. But the moment in the later stretch when the accumulated suspicion bursts all at once, it becomes clear that long buildup was anything but wasted.

Performance — The ensemble around a bound, sneering Daisy

The actors’ ensemble is the real stage of this film. Samuel L. Jackson invests Major Warren with dignity, fury, and sly humor all at once, becoming the axis that drives the drama. The long monologue he carries in the middle of the cabin is one of the film’s most powerful passages. Kurt Russell renders a rough, stubborn transporter with weight, and Walton Goggins deftly inhabits a man who seems oafish at first but gradually reveals his true colors. Above all, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Daisy is the standout. Bound and beaten yet sneering all the while, her face condenses the film’s cruel atmosphere into a single character.

What the film says — A cabin that becomes a microcosm of a fractured society

Just as the title suggests, this film has no character you cannot hate. All eight lie, wield violence, and deceive others for their own gain. With the period just after the Civil War as his backdrop, Tarantino shows how unhealed hatred and distrust fester and rupture within a small space. Black and white, Union and Confederate, law and lawlessness mix under one roof, and that cabin, where no one can trust anyone, reads like a microcosm of a fractured society. The truth is brought to light, in the end, only through blood.

Ratings & reception

Its IMDb rating is a solid 7.8 out of 10. Its Rotten Tomatoes freshness is 74%, and its Metacritic score is 68 out of 100. Critics highly praised the ambition of the 70mm photography, the actors’ fine ensemble, and Morricone’s music, while opinions diverged over the excessive length and the level of violence. Morricone won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for this work, proving the mark of a master once more.

Verdict

The Hateful Eight is among the most patience-demanding of Tarantino’s films. The long runtime and slow pacing are a clear barrier to entry, but the thrill of the explosion and twist at the end of that wait is intense. If you can enjoy the direction that handles a confined space like theater and the dense interplay of the actors, this film rewards you fully. As a work whose flaws are as distinct as its appeal, ★4.0 suits it.

Recommended for

• Viewers who enjoy the psychological warfare and twists of characters gathered in a locked room
• Those who can endure long rhythms and dense dialogue
• Anyone who loves Tarantino’s signature aesthetic of violence and dialogue