A group of friends is on a road trip, and their destination is the Norwegian woods. It does not take long before they find themselves running for their lives in the forest. Some Norwegian rednecks are hunting them, and this is no game.
“Rovdyr,” also known as “Manhunt,” is a poor man’s copy of the classic Deliverance. A group of obnoxious friends travels in an ugly van, heading deep into the woods. Once they are out there, they end up running for their lives because some rednecks decide to hunt them.
The main problem with this movie is the poor script. The group of friends is obnoxious and irritating, so you cannot help but hope they meet a brutal end. The guy driving the van is so unbearable that it is insane to think the scriptwriters believed this was a good idea. The irritating character in the wheelchair from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is more sympathetic than this idiot.
Then there are the villains, and they are boring as hell. In a movie like this, you usually expect villains with personalities and enough screen time to get to know the psychos behind the mayhem. But not in “Rovdyr,” aka “Manhunt.” They do not say a word, and we never get any explanation of who they are or why they are doing this. At first, I thought they were cannibals, but there is a scene toward the end that suggests they might be fans of Ted Bundy and corpses. You know what I mean.
The killings are disappointing. There is no creativity here as the characters are killed one by one. There is plenty of blood and nasty wounds, including a scene where one of the villains pulls out a victim’s intestines. So does that mean they are cannibals?
Does the movie have any tension? No, I cannot say that it does. The group of friends runs through the woods while the villains chase them with rifles. That is basically it. Suddenly, the villains just show up scene after scene, like John Rambo. There is no tension at all because you cannot take them seriously due to their complete lack of personality. Nothing about them is scary, and the scriptwriters should be ashamed of themselves.
You do not usually associate Norwegian movies with the slasher genre, and that is fine by me because a movie like this should never have been made. The only reason “Rovdyr,” aka “Manhunt,” received attention in the Norwegian press is that Norway does not produce many slasher movies. I recommend skipping this one, even if you are Norwegian. It is a lazy movie that lacks something crucial: its own identity. And the ending sucks. But the runtime is short. Thank God for that.