The Troll Hunter – Trolling (2010)

Directed by: André Øvredal | 104 minutes | action, drama, horror, thriller, adventure | Actors: Otto Jespersen, Hans Morten Hansen, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Mørck, Knut Nærum, Robert Stoltenberg, Glenn Erland Tosterud

Trolls may lack the sex appeal of werewolves and vampires, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make fun movies about them. This is proven by ‘The Troll Hunter’, a Norwegian horror film about three students who encounter a real troll hunter while making a documentary about bear attacks. His name is Hans and he is employed by a government agency that maintains the troll population and takes care of specimens that make human victims. At the end of each successful troll hunt, a crew of migrant workers appears to clean up the petrified corpses and leave footprints to convince the public that bears have caused the havoc in the Norwegian forests. The people are not aware that the mythological creatures really exist, and the government would like to keep it that way. The students decide to travel with Hans and record his work on video.

In the tradition of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Cloverfield’, ‘The Troll Hunter’ presents itself as found footage. The film starts slowly and initially documents every car ride and ferry crossing, but just when you get tired of the wobbly filmed banalities, the first troll shows up. Trolls in ‘The Troll Hunter’ look exactly like the ones from the souvenir shop, only a few turns bigger. The size of a mature pine tree, to be exact. If you’re lucky. The creatures aren’t really scary, and the film is only tense at times, but that is made up for by the fun director Øvredal has with the troll myth. For example, the creatures in ‘The Troll Hunter’ can smell Christian blood just like in the legends. Difficult if you are anything more in the Lord than you have pretended to your friends. And what about other religions? “I have no idea,” Hans says to a frightened student who has just hired a Muslim woman as a camerawoman, “but we’ll notice that for sure”.

With the exception of a few impressive night scenes that come into their own especially in a movie theater, ‘The Troll Hunter’ is a bit too messy and too unbalanced to convince as a horror. It is very successful as a comedy, thanks to the black humor and the excellent interpretation by Otto Jespersen. Between the rather dull minor characters, he shines as a bearded troll hunter who dispenses with his task sullenly but capably and afterwards grumbles about dealing with the red tape (“I have to fill in a form, that’s government policy these days”). Hans may have an exciting profession, but when you hear him complain about the poor pay and the impossible working hours, you may recognize yourself in him.