It doesn't take a huge amount of money to make a really great film. We've seen great low-budget movies develop out of a few simple ideas, a twist or two, and a little bit of solid acting. I'm thinking of movies like "Duel" - or the latter half of "Apocalypto". These suspenseful chase pieces featuring a good guy we can all relate to, caught in a very bad situation, can be thrilling. At first, El Rey de la Montana (english title: King of the Hill) suggests we are in for such a treat. Unfortunately the storyline never really develops to the point where we feel a connection to either the hero(es) or villain(s). There seemed to be some undue secrecy surrounding every character in the movie, preventing the viewer from fully understanding or appreciating the gravity of the situations that they found themselves in. Perhaps this was the point. When we don't know enough to trust others, we can't fully care about others. If this was the point, it was also the movie's biggest flaw.

I thought this film was very good up until it is revealed that the sniper is a child with his brother who has a double barrelled shotgun out in the woods and mountains, playing a so called game called 'King Of The Hill'. If you weren't on the main character's side before, knowing now that the killers are a couple of stupid kids (the children are in no way menacing and i think the acting looks as if they should be, but couldn't quite do menacing as they are children) should have made you completely on his side by now. I'm not saying that having kids as the killers wasn't an effective idea; as I had no idea it was going to be children, and indeed it worked a treat in my opinion. However, for me, this idea lead to a disastrous ending, with the film portraying a somewhat guilt filled, failed meaningful point from the main character's perspective that 'It's just a kid, I can't kill a child' (the struggling and biting child effectively pushes him to drown the boy), which seems to cross the main character's mind when he gets the upper hand on the child stalkers with guns. Here's the thing,If your entire day was being governed (to put it politely) by someone who was shooting at you (and who already shot you in the leg) regularly from a distance, pinning you down, killing your friend, randomly killing animals, effectively hunting you down into the ground; it's simply not conceivable that you would develop a conscience when you finally get to meet the one who was shooting at you.

This is a thriller about a young man (Leonardo Sparaglia) and a young woman (Maria Valverde) whose cars break down in the middle of a mountainous Spanish wilderness. They had bumped into each other briefly, so to speak, in a gasoline station rest room, but they're otherwise strangers. They are both lost.They find themselves hunted by mysterious figures with rifles equipped with telescopic sights. And do those bullets make a racket on their arrival.In Valverde's car they drive quickly away from the area where the bullets kept popping around them until they reach a dilapidated bar. The break in and Valverde is attending to Sparaglia's wound when two cops drive up, search them, and demand that they be taken to the scene of this so-called ambush. The two cops find the story believable but at a price.Sparaglia and Valverde barely escape. Now without cars, they stumble through the damp woods and yellowed poplars, try to cross surging rivers, fall into pits, and do the usual things that pursued people in the wilderness do.The movie is full of clichés. Let me mention a few without dwelling on them. (1) There are myriad close ups of sweating and terrified faces. (2) The camera wobbles as if it's had too many Anise del Monos. (3) Why did the fleeing couple decide to stop at a bar where it was obvious the hand of man had never set foot for at least twenty years? (4) When the two hostile cops accost the couple at the bar, why do they think the trembling couple are lying? Instead of asking if the couple had broken in, why didn't they ask to see Sparaglia's bleeding leg wound? (5) One glance at the cops and we know they are there for only two reasons -- to provide a sense of false hope and to be killed. (6) A cop is shot outside his car, within which the young couple of imprisoned, so why does he whirl about and aim his pistol at THEM? (7) Why did the two cops force the couple to take them back to the scene of the ambush in the first place? (8) When the second cop is popped, why don't they grab his pistol before scurrying off into the woods? (9) When escaping from a sniper, why not drive away in a car, even if it has a flat tire -- and to hell with the rim? (10) Why, when Valverde is trapped in a small pit and Sparaglia is out looking for a stick to pull her up with, and they both know that snipers are in the vicinity hunting them with a dog -- does she repeatedly shout his name at the top of her lungs? And what an unAmerican name it is -- "Quim." We can only be thankful than en Español it's pronounced "Keem." (11) The photography is in fashionable high contrast and draws colors from the ghoulish green area of the palette.That gets the bad stuff pretty much out of the way. If the first two thirds of the film are exactly what you'd expect in this trashy genre, the same can't be said for the last third.There is, for instance, no dead body that leaps back to life at an awkward moment, which is a refreshing change. I've been praying that, once dead, they stayed dead.And -- I won't spoil this, but the heavies are not what you'd anticipate -- no skinheaded clowns in black leather with barbed wire tattoos across their chests. Nobody wearing a hockey mask or disguised as Karl Rove. Just a couple of empty headed refugees from a Middle School taking part in a kind of scavenger hunt in which everybody loses. And there are unexpected twists I won't get into.The acting doesn't have to be particularly good in a movie that consists chiefly of people stumbling through the bushes or sneering at one another -- and it ISN'T particularly good -- but Sparaglia is believable as the young man scared spitless, and Valverde has great big moo cow eyes and an aquiline nose that falls just short of beautiful.At the close, the hunting dog moseys up to the survivor and nuzzles him. I was glad to see that. There is nothing like the love of a good dog. I don't mean carnal love, of course, but fellowship, what the Greeks called "philia." A dog is a man's best friend. They're easy to read. You can tell when a dog likes you because he wags his tail, smiles, lets his tongue hang out, and drools. CATS never do that. Cats are too self contained. They're uncanny and know a lot more than they're letting on. If you and your cat traded sizes, your cat would eat you. Would your dog do that? No. No, your dog would not. Never trust a cat. There's a lot of tension in this film, almost in spite of the stereotypes that are splashed all over the screen.

The "hunting humans" formula is one of the oldest (ever since the magnificent "The Most Dangerous Game" in 1933) but still most effective formulas in horror/suspense cinema. The creators of "El Rey de la Montaña" clearly were very much aware of that and, additionally, this instant sleeper cult-hit from Spain even feature the atmosphere of a genuine early 70's backwoods survival shocker. This is one of the greatest and most intensely disturbing chillers to have come out in Europe in last ten years or so, and that is saying a lot because Europe is the most flourishing continent for the horror genre at the moment. Although working from a very basic and rudimentary script director Gonzalo López-Gallego keeps his film surprising and totally unpredictable, mainly thanks to some shocking story revelations, very atypical character drawings and a sublime use of the desolate filming locations. On his way to his ex-girlfriend, Quim meets an attractive young girl named Bea and has sex with her in the gas station's toilet. Her love, however, isn't very sincere as she steals Quim's wallet and goes away. He searches for her in the mountainous countryside, but his chase comes to an abrupt end when an invisible shooter (or shooters) fires at his car. Now he and Bea will have to work together in order to stay alive and, on top of everything, deal with distrustful policemen and survive the robust landscape. "King of the Hill" is a uniquely versatile film. The camera alternately follows the preys as well as the hunters, the latter from first-person-shooter perspective like often used in video games, and I don't think you are supposed to feel connected with any of them. There simply aren't any heroes in this story. Quim is a stalker and a coward, Bea is a thief and a tramp, and just wait until you see who the marksmen are and what their motivations to hunt people down are exactly. The film contains relatively few graphic violence or raw images. The shock-impact merely relies on the unexpected plot twists and the truly astounding locations. Not since "Deliverance" has there been another movie that managed to make nature look so menacing! I'm not entirely sure if the movie was intended as criticism towards the increasing amount of violence featuring in video games and how far this negatively influences our children, but it's first and foremost a nail-biting thriller that also messes with you head. At the end of the film, you don't know who to root for anymore and so many questions remain unanswered, but presumably that's part of the power of this perplexing tense thriller. Watch this guaranteed future cult classic as soon as you can, but – please – be careful not to read too many reviews, news articles or interviews with cast and crew before you do, as a lot of these reveal essential plot twists.