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Manhunt - aka “Rovdyr” ( 2008)

Dir: Patrik Syversen

Norway, 1974, four friends, Camilla (Henriette Bruusgaard) her controlling boyfriend Roger (Lasse Valdal) and brother and sister Mia (Nini Bull Robsahm) and Jorgen (Jørn Bjørn Fuller Gee) are heading out into the deep forests for a weekend of hiking and camping.

Tensions are high in their cramped little camper van and even a break stop at a small diner offers no respite as the locals are not welcoming and then Roger offers a strange, seemingly scared female hitchhiker a lift against the better judgement of a defiant Mia.

They don’t get far down the road though before the group are attacked by a group of men who tie them up in a dark, dense, epic Norwegian forest in preparation for a hunt….

This fast disappearing decade has seen a mini boom in effective Horror film making from Europe.
And this boom has been delivering the goods via, thankfully, a real mixed brew of styles from the gritty and grotesque (Germany‘s “Cannibal“, Britain‘s “Mum and Dad“), to brutally extreme movies with art house sensibilities and high class technical skills (France’s “Martyrs” and “Inside”), to serious dramatic Horror (Sweden‘s “Let the Right One In”), to gory, fun, popcorn flicks like Britain’s “Shaun of the Dead”, “Doghouse” and Norway’s “Dead Snow”, to visceral, back to basics, fare like France’s “Frontiers” and this, Norway’s “Manhunt”.

Along with this boom in production we have also seen (in America too) a return to almost 70’s style and levels of extreme violence and bloody, depraved sadism.
This return to some kind of Grindhouse aesthetic has met with varying success, with Rob Zombie’s astute homage coupling of “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects” being the high point, the “Hostel” films being the middle point and sadly “Manhunt” representing the lower tier.

Director/co-Writer (with Nini Bull Robsahm) Patrik Syversen has made perhaps the most blatantly throwback 70’s film out of the whole bunch. Not only in daring to set his film actually in the 70’s but also in the way the film looks (from the high contrast, simple/muted colour scheme and grimy cinematography) to the soundtrack (David Hess’ haunting folk ballad from Craven’s “Last House on the Left” mixes it with Simon Boswell‘s original score) and this has obviously been done with a fan’s love of that era.
But you need to have your movie have its own strengths to truly make a satisfying throwback to other movies. Your new movie must hold up in every way even without those throwback trappings and this must apply to those who recognise all the retro styling and influence to those who don’t recognise any of it.
And it is here that “Manhunt” falls down.
As its own film it’s simply a barely average Slasher/backwoods film that falls into various silly traps and no amount of retro decoration can change that.

Biggest problem is the faceless killers.
Now faceless killers are okay (though we of course lose a nice extra layer to the film’s dynamic like the glorious ‘Family‘ sequences in the film that “Manhunt“ most apes, Tobe Hooper’s classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre“) as long as we don’t spend time with them. If we do spend time with them (and indeed see the faces of the faceless) and even if that time is split into small, individual, scenes, we need to have them deliver some kind of personality and hook.
Here though, even when would-be victim and killer share the same scene, the killers never speak and all share a very similar look and have not a single slice of individual personality.
So during these scenes where we spend time with the killers the film falls between two stools because we now lose the totally faceless, and hence creepy and mysterious, killers but at the same time we are offered up no personality and no interesting dynamic to the killers we have now actually met.
To see this kind of ‘being hunted through the woods by fleeting shapes’ set-up with killers we sometimes actually spend time with watch the forgotten 80’s gem “Hunter’s Blood”, where the being tracked /sudden death horror mixes with a wonderfully entertaining ‘Family of Killers’ plot where we are offered up nutters who are memorable individuals.

The film also repeats itself too much, especially concerning ‘handy weapon’ events.
It’s a nice idea to have the hunters play with their prey (often they are caught, but then given a chance to get free again or used as bait) with the best moment being a wonderful scene where the supposedly hidden victims have actually been seen by one of the killers (who butchers a body right by them), but he decides to walk away and let them think they have evaded the hunters.
But this caught/not caught idea makes up basically most of the film and it can get a bit boring and too often the screenplay gets the lead character, Camilla (actually a very nice turn by Henriette Bruusgaard), out of these situations by having her find a handy weapon just in time. Be it a knife in easy reach, a knife handily dropped on the ground right by her, a shotgun left right next to her hiding spot happnes to be or even, when it has now become a running though obvioulsy unintentional joke, a freakin’ bow and arrow just lying on the forest floor waiting to be picked up at a convenient time.

The ending is also a damp squib.
It pulls an old twist we have seen before (sometimes at the end, sometimes in the middle, of a movie) but actually does nothing with it. As the credits roll we are actually left scratching our heads because the set-up leaves us not so much with a nasty twist as an unanswered question.
The fact is what should normally be (an often used, as mentioned) certain doom situation for our character in "Manhunt" actually seems like not such a great threat at all considering what she has just been through and surely she will simply get out of what should have conclusively been her certain demise. Or not? Who knows? But as said, the final end threat seems so inconsequential to what's preceded it, it does not work as a nasty twist…just as an unfinished part in the screenplay.

But it’s not all negative of course.
We have a nicely lean running time, the retro styling is fun and well done, the FX are simple but suitably nasty and generally well crafted (some needless, sadly obvious, CGI blood splatter aside…enough of this crap already!) even if the blood is perhaps a bit too dark (though realistic) sometimes.

The kill scenes are above average fare (though a couple are weak, one is even off screen) and often effectively sadistic in how they are drawn out (in fact a disturbingly sexualised shotgun scene shows just how far the UK censors, the BBFC, have gone in what they now pass), with the first attack sequence being particularly effective.
And the film is generally well made and acted, especially by Bruusgaard who goes from a strikingly attractive 70’s chick to blood smeared screaming ‘thing’ with great efficiency.

But ultimately the film is too repetitive, badly plotted in its set-ups, finishes in a weak way and loses its hook by giving us non-event killers who should have remained unseen if they were to be given no personality of any kind.
Also, accept for language and that wonderfully dark ocean of Scandanvian forest, the movie's need to follow a 70's American Horror/Grindhouse aesthetic means it has almost no other Norwegian identity. Which is, or is not, an issue according to how you feel.
Visceral and too the point, but sadly, in the end, a definite also-ran.