Manhunt (2008)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

'F#*?ing city people'Syversen's debut follows in a long tradition of horror movies where a group of unsuspecting travellers stray into the unfamiliar territory of a band of murderous natives. Accordingly shot in homage to seventies slasher movies, this Norwegian equivalent to 'Wrong Turn' is set in 1974, and with its use of hand-held cameras and close-ups, together with the haunting notes of a hunting horn, occasionally offers a far more chilling tale of a fight for survival in the backwoods. This more realistic sense of threat is accentuated by the depiction of the hunters as everyday rustic types, much in the vein of 'Deliverance'. The feel of the period is not only provided by the musical score, with the opening track taken from David Hess' soundtrack for Wes Craven's 1972 budget slasher, 'the Last House on the Left', but also by the tone of colour in which the film is shot. At the outset, the four characters, en route to their final break prior to starting their academic studies, offer potential for development which the story- line lets slip. This is especially true of the abusive boyfriend of the lead character, though the audience should still relish when he gets his just desserts. Aside from a genuine early shock at the roadside execution of one of the main protagonists, played incidentally by Syversen's co-writer and assistant director, Nini Bull Robsahm, the story- line's reliance on the common plot devices of this genre eventually detract from the overall impact of the movie. Furthermore, it requires a bit of a leap of the imagination to accept that the main female protagonist can so easily transform herself from a screaming and shivering wreck to a female 'Robin Hood' in terms of her sudden found skills with a bow and arrows. Having passively endured the abuse of her boyfriend, this becomes even harder to accept as credible. In addition, the director in attempting to put their own spin on the commonplace final ploy of whether the final survivor has reached safety or not, offers an inconclusive and tentative ending.

Manhunt is set in 1974 in Norway where four teenagers, Mia (co-writer Nini Bull Robsahm) & her brother Jørgen (Jørn-Bjørn Fuller-Gee) together with Mia's best friend Camilla (Henriette Bruusgaard) & her obnoxious boyfriend Roger (Lasse Valdal) are driving deep into the Norwegian wilderness to spend a day or two hiking through some thick forests in the name of fun. The friends stop off at a small gas station to fill their camper van up & buy some food where they meet a girl named Renate (Janne Starup Bønes) who ask's Roger the knob for a lift, since Renate is quite attractive he says yes. As the five drive along the isolated forest roads Renate feels ill & ask's Roger to stop so she can be sick outside, while waiting for Renate to feel better the five are attacked by three men wielding shotgun's & knives. Two are killed straight away while the other's find themselves stranded in the thick forest miles from anywhere being hunted down & killed like animals by the men, but why & can they beat the odds & survive?This Norwegian production was co-written & directed by Patrik Syversen & is a fairly simple mix of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) & Deliverance (1972) with it's camper van of teens picking up a strange hitchhiker & then running into trouble deep in the woods as they hunted down & killed at which point the film plays out like a survivalist backwoods horror film that doesn't really stand out from the crowd if I am honest despite it being well made & thankfully short at just under 80 minutes (including end credits). While Manhunt isn't exactly a terrible film by any means it's hardly great, there's no much originality here as virtually every scene, character, concept & idea feels like it has been lifted directly from another film. From the setting to the clichéd teens to the killers to the creepy locals to the final surviving girl who gets to dish out some revenge & stay alive long enough for an ambiguous ending that leaves things up in the air. Manhunt just feels so routine, even at under 80 minutes long the pace is sluggish at times & it's hard to care for anyone involved. The very minimalist nature of the script & concept doesn't help either, dialogue is extremely sparse & after the first thirty minutes barely a word is said for the remainder of the film with the three killers themselves not saying a single word during the entire time they are seen on screen, obviously this means the killers never reveal any sort of motive & as a result it's never made clear what's going on exactly or why. It became quite frustrating actually not to know about anything or anyone & Manhunt does feel empty & shallow as a consequence. It's just the whole film & everything that happens seems almost pointless as no reason or explanation for any of it is ever given or even as much hinted at. Who was Renate anyway? If she knew of the killers why not just contact the police or tell the group? Who was the guy tied to the tree? Manhunt is effective enough in a minimalistic brutal sort of way but don't expect any sort of story or originality.I do feel that there is a little hypocrisy here as any Hollywood made film so simplistic & with so little plot would surely have been mercilessly trashed but because Manhunt is Norwegian it is praised for it's basic & shallow nature as it makes the audience more detached & the killers more inhuman? I don't think so, Manhunt just has no story or originality of it's own although that in itself doesn't make it a bad film at all. Originally called Rovdyr in Norway (which translates into English as Predator) the international English title is Manhunt (which explains what happens in the film more than the script does...) while it was apparently called Manhunt - Backwoods Massacre in Germany & strangely known as Naked: Booby Trap in Japan. There's some decent gore here, people are tied up with barb wire, people are stabbed & shot with someone's ankle being blasted off & in the films goriest moment a guy has his stomach sliced open & his intestines pulled out. Manhunt is a fairly grim & brutal film, the killer pressing the knife against Camilla's throat & rubbing it against her body as her boyfriend watches along with one or two other unsettling scenes.Filmed in full 2:35:1 widescreen Manhunt looks nice & is well made with minimal shaky hand-held camcorder camera work & none of that awful machine gun editing that I hate so much. Being a Norwegian film Manhunt is subtitled although there's hardly any dialogue anyway & I think you could probably watch it without subtitles & still figure out what's going on fairly easily. The acting seems alright.Manhunt is an alright backwoods slasher survivalist horror film from Norway that passes 75 minutes effectively enough bu the glaring lack of any reasoning behind anything that happens annoyed me & it's also quite predictable. I can't say I hated it but I can't say I loved it either, to be honest I will probably have completely forgotten about it by the end of the week.

Four young people travel by van through the forest grown inland of Norway in 1974.During their stay at a gas station frightened girl asks them for a lift.The driver agrees without hesitation.Bad choice!Soon the entire group is hunted and systematically murdered in the deep Norwegian woods by three crazed rednecks.I'm a big fan of backwoods survival horror and "Rovdyr" doesn't disappoint.The violence comes thick and fast and is brutal.The film is surely influenced by "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre","Rituals" and "Deliverance",but the pace is fast and the acting is strong.The look of "Rovdyr" captures well the backwoods terror cinema of 70's.So if you want your horror fast and furious then "Backwoods" delivers the gore in spades.9 out of 10.

Again ! As I've said before, apparently nobody in Norway are able to make a good movie that works. Hence, this movie disappointed me as so many other Norwegian ones.I saw this one yesterday. My girlfriend looked puzzled at me as i unaffectedly ate popcorn looking somewhat bored, while a host of girls covered their faces in horror. My calm popcorn eating behavior should not be puzzling; this movie is not scary.I jumped a few times in my seat, but for the same reason that you would react if someone bang together two frying pans while standing behind you. If a horror movie has to scare the audience in this way, it's not good in my view. While such movies as 'Alien' are gut wrenching and thrilling to watch, 'Rovdyr' goes for the two frying pans approach. It's low budget, and the acting is poor. The dialog, especially in the beginning is straight out of amateur night. There are a few somewhat uncomfortable scenes in it that's not suited for the younger audience. But having seen my fair share of zombie movies, I wasn't to bothered.And I have a few other problems with it, such as the lack of a little realism, which isn't uncalled for. In one scene a girl is being held by the hair while a hillbilly is using his sawed-off shotgun to fondle her. She has both arms free, and could have disarmed him in less than a second.In another scene she is shown escaping a camp site. Although two axes, a huge knife and a shotgun are readily available and she has plenty of time to choose from the inventory, she chooses to head into the forest unarmed. Argh ! The logic ! And no, it's not the panic psychology excuse that she can't think straight; she was armed with a big knife in one scene before the camp site, but that knife magically disappears. That should have been one for the blooper reel, but instead it ended up in the final cut.Finally, all of the hillbillies attacking the campers appear to be super stealthy or close to invisible, as they attack at point blank range from nowhere, even when the persons they attack have close to a 360 degree angle of view. And they move way too fast through the forest grounds, given their out of shape hillbilly physique.Horror movies, especially the low budget ones, tend to have unsettling logical flaws, but this one is littered with them.The verdict: Watching it was a waste, even though the popcorn was really good.