Manhunt (2008)

It's interesting watching this film so soon after Them, because it really does bring home the technical skill of the French/Romanian film.

Like Them, this film (named Rovdyr in the original Norwegian) features a group of everyday people unexpectedly coming under persistent and unexplained assault by an anonymous group of aggressors.

The everyday people in this case are a group of soon-to-be college students, plus a couple of incidental folks they encounter, and the scene of the attack is up in the isolated backwoods of the Norwegian countryside.  Our protagonists are there for a hiking trip, though mostly they seem to be squabbling with each other, even after they start getting targeted by pyscho-killers.

Manhunt is an adequate enough slasher film of the "the entertainment is mostly in the imaginative violence" kind that was so prominent back in the 80s.  The gore effects are good, the acting - as far as I can tell, given it's in Norwegian - seems fine, and the script moves along at a decent pace.

But if you're not a full-on slasher aficionado (and possibly even if you are), you're likely to find yourself asking "is this it?".  Manhunt is so busy ploughing through its violent plot points that it very rarely stops to take a moment to actually be tense.  Despite all the gory antics, the film lacks any real sense of menace.

If you want something scary, you need to look elsewhere.  And if you just want to see a bunch of teens getting murdered in the woods ... well you'd be better off watching one of the better Friday the 13th films; say number 4 or number 7.