El Rey de la Montaña (Gonzalo López-Gallego, 2007)

King of the Hill is proof if more proof were needed that it's not only the Americans who can churn out painted-by-numbers survival thrillers which tell us to avoid the backwoods like the plague. The Spanish, for one, are building up quite a stock in the genre. The year before this, the one where tourists Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine are hounded by murderous hicks was even released internationally as Backwoods. That wasn't exactly brimming with originality and neither is López-Gallego's effort.
A lost couple of urbanites who meet by chance are soon being shot at by unseen manhunters, and that's about it. Sure, it's broodily shot and with a more understated and unsettling soundtrack than its modern US doppelgangers have, but there's nary a sense that the director has either the nous or will to convey any deeper message. Then he really shoots himself in the foot by showing us the sociopaths directly, so the room for surprise is well and truly gone.
Did any of these films really need to be made after the definitive Deliverance?

3/10