MOVIE REVIEW - "Trollhunter"

Inventive Trollhunter Forgettable Fun

Volda College students Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) and Johanna (Johanna Mørck) go into the Norwegian countryside to document a series of recent bear attacks, coming across an unlicensed stranger named Hans (Otto Jespersen) who is apparently hunting them illegally. Keeping to himself, unwilling to answer questions, they follow this strange, weathered man as he goes on his nightly hunts, filming everything in hopes of catching something useful for their school documentary project.



What the capture is footage trolls, actual bona fide live under a bridge smell the blood of a Christian man turn to stone in sunlight trolls. Turns out the government has gone out of their way to hide their existence for eons, hiring ex-soldiers like Hans to keep the population in check and keep the public from knowing their out there. But he’s tired of the secrecy, doesn’t like the layers of bureaucracy he has to wade through in order to do his job. It’s time the truth about trolls was uncovered, and these three excitable and driven college students are just the ones to help him get the word of their existence out to the public.

The Norwegian import Trollhunter is another ‘found footage’ film along the same lines as [Rec], The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. It is another entry in the genre, all shaky-cam over the shoulder footage capturing the action in documentary-like detail in attempt to make it a more visceral and realistic experience for the audience.

While I’m tired of this trend it must be admitted that writer/director André Øvredal fantastical real world fairy tale opus gets the job done, delivering a 90-minute entertainment that’s as silly and nonsensical as it is a heck of a lot of fun. While there are some dry spots, and while it doesn’t always come together, for the most part this movie is an engaging and inventive treat filled with imagination. The filmmaker has crafted a mythology for his hunter and for the creatures that he is tracking that is as wild as it is inspired, seemingly no stone left unturned making things far more believably authentic than they would have been otherwise.

At the same time, this is awfully slight stuff, and like most films in this genre at a certain point the surprise vanishes as there is only one way for things to come to an end. As glorious as the final hunt is (the crew finds itself pitted against a massive “Jotnar” troll hiding in frigid and icy mountains of Norway, Hans blaring “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” over his vehicle’s speakers in order to draw it out into the open), what happens at the end of it is hardly a shock. These pictures are sadly starting to lose a little of their allure, and it’s going to take some major shaking up on the part of a filmmaker intent on smashing convention into pieces in order for that to happen.

Øvredal is not that filmmaker. For all his movie’s massive amounts of whimsy and imagination he rarely strays from the expected template. As much fun as learning about “Ringlefinches” and “Tosserlads” is (they’re variety of trolls) seeing it through the camera lens as photographed Thomas, Kalle and Johanna is strictly by the numbers. The rapid-fire dialogue, the running through the woods in confusion, the wavering focus of the camera as it eyes the gigantic Jotnar, all of it and more has been done so many times before the impact can’t help but be lessened, and for all its strengths that’s one minus difficult to get past.

Still, like I already stated Trollhunter can be a major blast. Jespersen is great as the oafish Hans, his indignity as he dons a metal suit of armor to extract a blood sample from a sick Ringlefinch or the way he bristles at filling out his ‘Slayed Troll Form’ fitting the character to perfection. The first encounter with the Tosserlad is so good it literally caused me to squeal in embarrassingly girlish glee, while some of the bureaucratic jokes (including the ones involving imported bear carcasses) are downright inspired. In short, for all its over-familiarity I liked this movie and had a heck of a time watching it, and as late night rentals or fodder for midnight matinees go Øvredal’s fantasy-fueled opus fits the bill nicely.