Sorry I haven’t been posting.  Busy, busy, busy, but more on that later.  In the mean time, this press release for Vue Cinemas caught my eye.  It applies to UK folks only (or anyone willing to hop on a plane, I suppose), and most of my readers are in the States, but I wanted to share it all the same because one of the free screenings in question is for MANHUNT, which is also known as ROVDYR, which is also known as one of my favorite horror films of 2008.

The other two films are ONE EYED MONSTER and the controversial DEADGIRL, but all I can offer is an excerpt for my ROVDYR review right now, full press release after the break.

ROVDYR is brutal.  Very, very, brutal in the best, chase through the woods, heart pounding kind of way.  But, aside from the admirable absence of rape, what makes this horror film better than other backwoods chasers is that all 78 minutes of its lean running time take place in gorgeous daylight.  I have always been and will always be the biggest proponent there can be of horror with the lights on.  Anyone can make night scary, but it takes a specific talent to make illumination threatening.  ROVDYR helmer Patrik Syversen shows off just what that talent is.

Part 1: January to March.
Part 2: April to June.
Part 3: July to September.
Part 4: October to December.
Part 5: Events.
Part 6: Awards. (coming)

This was fun.  I set off to do a roundup of 2008′s horror output, good and bad, and ended up with a rather nice guide, a work in progress to be broken into 6 sections: One for each quarter’s theatrical and DVD releases, one for major news and obituaries, and a final for a Top 10 of 2008.

The criteria rests that a film must be uniquely relevant to 2008.  That is not to say that a title must be mutually exclusive to ’08, just that it be important.  For example, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE premiered in 2006, but wasn’t made available to paying customers outside of a film festival until earlier this year in the UK.

As for the date framing to follow, these are not ironclad.  All US titles should fall within their respective releases.  It is tougher to place something like MANDY LANE or ROVDYR, which having no US release could go either by their foreign theater or DVD runs.  So don’t complain too much about where a film lies, this will all be on one page once all parts are done, but if I’ve left something off entirely – and I am sure I have – please let me know.

Directed by Patrik Syversen, 2008
Written by Patrik Syversen and Nini Bull Robsahm

I am not inclined to be a fan of backwoods, hillbilly horror.  I get it.  The villains don’t live in a city, so they must be inbred.  Hur, hur.  The only thing they know how to do is live in the filthiest conditions possible.  Hur, hur.  Oh, and rape and kill you.  Hur, hur.  Some city kids go to the Wrong Gas Station and 70 minutes later the men are being stabbed in the kidneys while the women are having dirty fingernails run all over their body.  That’s the jist.

I should not like ROVDYR, but I do.  I like it a lot.  Like, a lot a lot.  Like, way totally.

Yes, it is a complete Wrong Gas Station movie, but there are enough variants to the fundamentals that it supplants all the ills of typical backwoods pseudo-slashers.  Perhaps the most influential difference is ROVDYR’s country of origin, Norway, a region not known for its horror films.  Filling  the Norweigan backwoods is the 1970′s setting, equipped with era appropriate music and clothing.  All of that is superficial, though, as there is another key ingredient that I don’t just like, I admire.

And no, I am not talking about Henriette Bruusgaard, the Scandinavian blonde at the center of it all.