Troll Hunter Review

Finally! A film about a person who tracks and kills jerks on internet message boards! It’s every blogger’s dream; at last – vindication! Wait… what’s that you say? Oh…

Finally! A Norwegian found-footage film about a group youths that get embroiled with a professional troll hunter! Posing as recovered documentary footage, Troll Hunter concerns a trio of college students who film their pursuit of what they believe to be a bear poacher. Their dogged persistence in tracking him pays off when it turns out that Hans, the fellow in question, is actually a government sanctioned troll hunter, whose job is to research the beasts and kill them when they stray from their territory.

Of course, the trouble with the found footage genre (see The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield,Paranormal Activity, et al), at least now that the genre is so wide spread, is that the audience is highly unlikely to believe that the footage is real – which means that to properly suspend the audience’s disbelief, the actors, direction and special effects teams really have their work cut out for them. Fortunately, André Øvredal and his minimal cast (including Otto Jespersen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Mørck and Glenn Erland Tosterud) all do a fine job. The troll effects are also pretty good, though perhaps not quite as convincing as Gareth Edwards’ similarly themedMonsters. When they are eventually unveiled (after which point, we do get lots of exciting shots of the enormous beasts), the trolls are actually more amusing than frightening, but this adds to the quirky appeal of the film rather than detracting from it. And despite their funny fizzgogs, the trolls’ behaviour is still dangerous enough to instil no little concern for our protagonists’ safety.

The film is by turns funny and satirical, scary and absorbing. It’s satisfying that the film isn’t just about creepy shocks in the middle of the night in the wood – the secret world of the Troll Security Service is properly realised and fleshed out. There are also some vaguely scientific explanations for troll physiology, apart from their amusing/unnerving ability to sniff out Christians. There are also numerous subtexts that can be read into the film – government bureaucracy, man vs. nature, the role of the journalist, etc – though none of these obtrude on the giddy sense of fun the film boasts.

Inevitably, like its Scandinavian cousins The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One Inbefore it, an American remake of the film is already pencilled in. Think of this what you will – as ever to me, it seems like an exercise in squeezing cash out of those too lazy to deal with subtitles (on a separate note, surely a more cost effective way of tapping into the can’t read, won’t read audience is to dub a foreign film?) – but I would certainly recommend catching Troll Hunter in this original incarnation. A more charming, amusing quasi-horror film you are unlikely to encounter any time soon.