Production notes

The film was produced by Zentropa for 20 million Danish kroner. It received co-production support from Sweden's Film i Väst and Zentropa International Sweden. Further support came from the Danish Film Institute, DR, Eurimages, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, the Swedish Film Institute, Sveriges Television, and the MEDIA Programme.

Given its estimated $3.8 million budget, the film was a financial success. Worldwide, it earned more than $16 million, including $7.9 million in Denmark. In the United States, it was shown in 47 theaters and earned $613,308.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 131 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Anchored by Mads Mikkelsen's sympathetic performance, The Hunt asks difficult questions with the courage to pursue answers head on." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 77 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The performance of Mads Mikkelsen as Lucas received widespread acclaim. Phillip French of The Guardian awarded the film four out of five stars, describing it as "gripping, unbearably tense, yet capable of great subtlety and nuance," and praised Mikkelsen as "one of the finest actors at work today." For his role, Mikkelsen won the Best Actor Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. Writing for Variety, Peter Debruge called the performance impressive, with Mikkelsen cast against type as a warm-hearted man who finds himself caught up in a situation way beyond his control, making Lucas’ immediate isolation and subsequent frustration tangible. Critics also praised Thomas Vinterberg's direction and the screenplay he co-wrote with Tobias Lindholm. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as the Danish director's most powerful since The Celebration (1998) with the charge of pedophilia playing an explosive role in a chilling study of communal hysteria. Rooney commended the script's construction and the director's ability to build tension. In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, calling it thematically rich but limited by its style, and noting its power in depicting how a community can band together against an individual in the guise of combating evil. Some reviews highlighted the film's provocative and unsettling nature. A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the film "is a merciless examination of the fear and savagery roiling just below the surface of bourgeois life." The film's ambiguous ending also generated considerable discussion among critics, who interpreted it as a statement on the permanent scars left by false accusations. In 2025, The Hunt was one of the films voted for the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times's list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century," finishing at number 268.