Rovdyr

As someone with very warm feelings (excessive perhaps) towards the concept of the people hunt, I’m usually exposed to all sorts of evil. Here, after only a few minutes I was already so exposed that I wished it would end as quickly and for the main characters as painlessly as possible. You can’t build a story like this around idiots that are more unlikeable than their killers, while only boringly copying horror tropes without contributing a single original idea. At least the female lead looks good, but nobody thought of allowing her to properly showcase her strengths, which surpass any contributions to filmmaking. It’s boring even despite its adequate runtime and a couple of nasty scenes… (14.04.2020)

Norway doesn’t produce many horror films, which is a shame because when they do make something (Cold Prey, Dark Woods), it’s really good, and Backwoods is further proof. Right now, immediately after watching it, I think it’s the best hixploitation I’ve seen since at least Storm Warning. The lack of originality (which is something I think most people don’t expect in the subgenre) is compensated by above-par brutality and rawness, while the story set in the 70s is a clear reference of the exploitation horror from that era. The very likeable heroine and the believable despair of all the characters made Backwoods a nerve-wrecking spectacle, the kind we haven’t seen in months. The yokels are yokel-y enough, the explicit images are sufficiently frequent and the runtime is reasonable. A must see for fans of redneck carnage. (24.07.2008)