Solo Review: Rovdyr (2008)

Sub-Genre- Survival
Cast Members of Note- A bunch of Nords, none of whom are really of note.

A bunch of annoying Nordic twenty-somethings are trekking into the backwoods to camp, or die, or whatever, and not only do they piss off the locals by calling them "retarded pig-fuckers," but they pick up a visibly insane hitchhiker, thus sealing all of their fates. They kinda need to go though, because they're really stupid and annoying. Still, I can't help but feel for them... Wait, yes I can. Pass away now, please.

"I wanna rip your frigging pig tails out of your head, honey!"

After the most annoying of them gets what she deserves (really, really deserves) on the roadway, the rest of the half-breeds from Oslo are dragged into the woods where they're hunted like three legged Llamas... in other words, very easily. *Let it be known that Llamas used to be able to turn invisible at will, but have since lost that ability due to their appetite for cocaine. Look it up on Wikipedia if you don't believe me.
 
I won't spoil the rest of the film for you here, but suffice it to say that this is a big downer of a movie. Sure the dumb-ass characters deserved to die painfully, but dammit all if I wasn't pulling for them towards the end!

If you're gonna tell me this Llama isn't high on cocaine, you are lying to yourself my friend.

This movie had some genuinely tense and creepy moments, some of which had me holding my breath. Combine that with a liberal amount of violence and gore, and Rovdyr is a flick that should satisfy most Horror fans. It's all very familiar territory, but for some reason it still feels relevant for the most part. Then again, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, so maybe I too easily ignored the similarities to Texas Chainsaw, Deliverance, Wrong Turn etc... Either way, familiar territory can be pretty fun sometimes.

Oh, and the ending... damn. He was sooooooo close!

Not him. He was never really close at all.

 

Does every stalk-and-slash movie have to be full of stupid-ass characters that do annoying things and refuse to use common sense? Attention filmmakers: characters that don't deserve to die are far more compelling to we viewers, and when we like them, that adds to the tension of your films!

"Am shut you face now or kill dead!" (Translated from the Norwegian.)

The list of countries in Europe where it's not safe to vacation continues to grow! At least we still have Switzerland...

Tourism is for suckers.

If you don't like extremely violent or realistically gory movies, then this is one you should probably skip; nasty, nasty, nasty is the best way I can describe this flick and it's gory happenings.

Nope.

Prude.

I think at one point someone said "Viva Sor-Tronderlag!" or something. It was pretty cool.

DO NOT pick up hitchhikers, especially in Norway. Also, it's never, ever a good idea to piss of the locals... how many times do we have to keep saying it, people?

Had you just been polite, you wouldn't be blowing a shotgun right now!

Rovdyr is nothing we haven't seen before, but it was a pretty good flick save for the annoying characters. Oh, and if you like your Horror flicks extremely graphic and bloody, you won't be disappointed with this one. Not at all. Definitely check Rovdyr out when you can; at only 1 hour and 15 minutes, you really can't go wrong.

B

Rovdyr (Manhunt) is available now on Blu-ray and DVD.

Finally, she shuts up!