Trollhunter | Review

Troll Hunter is a one trick pony. That trick is gigantic trolls parading around the Norwegian forests. Writer-director André Øvredal’s sophomore feature comes across as the kind of film idea that’s hatched in a film school dorm room and would make for an incredible short film, or element of a larger feature, but the problem is, there isn’t much story around it. Not as fashionable as the more than a decade old The Blair Witch Project, this import is revved up at time by the presence of the first few troll encounters, but it past act I, this gets repetitive, pointless, and far too ridiculous to care.

Constructed with they felt that a good way to hide the lack of story — place it in that ambiguous area where they tell you it’s found footage. The basic premise is that 200 some odd hours of tapes were mailed to the Norwegian authorities without any other information. Nothing was able to be confirmed, and this is a “rough cut” of that footage. Some viewers of course fall for it, but we’re talking about one percent. The film’s trademark trolls are nothing like those of the now infamous pair of Troll films from the 80s, now made famous by the documentary Best Worst Movie. No actors were employed for this role, nor were any makeup or animatronics. The trolls in Troll Hunter are gigantic, like hundred foot tall, digital things. To fight the gigantic digital things, one needs some TennTube (those things you use to pick up tennis balls at camp) sized things that are a cross between Ghostbusters lazers and tazer guns. You shock the trolls to death I guess. This is explained at some point in the film, but it’s quite convoluted, and the subtitle translation is a little off at times.

The audience gets this explanation via our entry into this world—a trio of local film students doing an “investigative journalism documentary” on the local bear hunters. Right, so the bear hunters they’re interviewing are all talking about some mysterious guy who’s mucking up the works for them by going and hunting without a license. Bears are showing up dead who they didn’t kill, and since “the bear hunting community is very small and tight knit,” it’s clearly this guy. The kids sense that the real story is in unmasking this guy, so they set off to find him – this is where the titular Troll Hunter comes into play.

Troll Hunter doesn’t fail for lack of a fun concept or great troll battle scenes. It fails because we just don’t care. They never really involve the characters more than to explain why we can physically be watching this footage. One of the initial group dies, he’s replaced by some other basically anonymous Norwegian, and if you have fallen asleep during that time you’d neither notice nor care. The American remake will be in need of some better storytellers.

Reviewed at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Park City at Midnight Section.

103 Mins. January, 24th, 2011

Rating 2.5 stars