The Troll Hunter – Review

Film, Reviews, Top Story

Norwegian film trip, trip-traps over confines of found footage genre

In the years since The Blair Witch Project brought the found footage sub-genre into the mainstream, audiences have been beaten over the head with all types of imitators. While quality from these films has waxed and waned, there’s one element that most have lacked all together — a sense of awe.

Found footage films, by their very nature, tend to exist in the dull, gritty realness of the every day. In their attempt to blend fact with fiction and fool some of the more gullible of audiences, found footage films tend to keep the fantastic tightly bound and only occasionally glimpsed.

The Troll Hunter, a new movie currently available on OnDemand from Magnet Releasing, shoots for the rafters and drags the real world feet first and screaming into the world of trolls, giants and Norwegian conspiracies.

André Øvredal directs the mockumentary about a team of college students who, in their attempts to interview a supposed bear poacher, meet the lone hunter who is responsible for keeping Norway’s troll population in check.

As Hans, the troll hunter, Otto Jespersen is a worn-out, bitter blue-collar worker. Under retainer by the Norwegian government, Hans spends his days traveling the countryside searching for clues that trolls are nearby — tossed trees, overturned rocks, half-eaten livestock. His nights are spent sneaking through the forests — armed only with a high-powered UV light.

The Troll Hunter does an admirable job blending legend with scientific acumen. Trolls’ tendency to turn to stone when exposed to light is explained by a calcium deficiency. The various species of troll are carefully charted and their geographical territories mapped. The filmmakers spent careful time building the world of The Troll Hunter — laying out rigid rules of logic that the film’s monsters lived by.

Before you think the film as dry as a nature documentary, Øvredal never forgets what type of film he is making. The writer/director has fun with his film and it shows increasingly as the college students delve deeper and deeper into the world of trolls.

Believe in Jesus? You better not submit an application to be a troll hunter. Trolls can, after all, smell the blood of a Christian man. It’s these types of details, rooted in legend but enhanced by the film’s cocktail of superstition and science, that sell the movie’s awe.

And oh, does the movie inspire some serious awe.

The monsters of The Troll Hunter are brought to life using computer effects. Their design torn from the pages of fairy tales every child grew up reading, the creatures look like they escaped from a Maurice Sendak children’s book. Ranging in size from slightly larger than a man to 200 feet tall, these monsters look amazing and their realism is heightened thanks to a careful use of shadows, framing techniques and kinetic camera work.

These aren’t cuddly giants looking for a great rumpus, though. The trolls from The Troll Hunter are ferocious predators, dumber than a bear but twice as deadly. There are moments in the film that become seriously suspenseful — tipping the movie from fantasy into straight-up horror.

As the college students join Hans in his investigation into why so many trolls are escaping from their government sanctioned territories, the film does something rare for a found footage film — it develops an honest to god story full of the same wonderment and childlike glee that Jurassic Park inspired nearly twenty years ago.

Øvredal has delivered a film with scope and grandness that uses the boundaries set forth by the found footage genre but manages to reach outside the genre’s confines and become something greater, something more epic.

There are the makings of a summer blockbuster in The Troll Hunter — with more imagination in one car-sized troll footprint than the entirety of Michael Bay’s career. If you are a fan of fantasy and are looking for something with a solid foundation to rest your dreams upon, The Troll Hunter is the type of movie that’ll stick with you for a long time.

Director: André Øvredal
Notable Cast: Otto Jespersen, Hans Morten Hansen, Thomas Alf Larsen
Writer(s): André Øvredal

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.