Review by Bill Brock
Norway is a fascinating country what with the fjords, the moose, and the blond ladies who don’t wear much clothing and have little to do beyond having frequent sex. That last one may actually be Swedish. But Norway is also the home of zombie Nazis and as it turns out, trolls. Not the fun “don’t mess with the voodoo” kind but the living rock sort that hang out under bridges and have a taste for mutton.
Troll Hunter makes for the second found footage movie I’ve liked. The first was Cloverfield. But that was J. J. Abrams and the man can do no wrong (I’m conveniently forgetting he wrote a hunk of Armageddon and that I didn’t care for Mission Impossible 3). Found footage movies come across as a thinly veiled excuse for sloppy filmmaking. Did you see the film crew in the mirror? The camera out of focus? The lack of steadi-cam? We meant for that shit to happen! Fuck you for questioning it. What? You can’t handle real life?
Troll Hunter has a bunch of college kids following an alleged poacher who turns out to be the guy with the awesomest job title of all time. Evel Knievel and Chuck Norris are a distant 2nd and 3rd to this guy. He’s a former Navy Ranger who was apparently so good at his job that the government approached him and asked him if he wanted to go fuck some trolls up and he said, “Sure. Whatever.”
The college kids follow him into the woods and ignore a sign that says “No Tresspassing. Blasting Area”. I’m guessing their school is the equivalent of your state’s party school that has a 700 SAT and 2.5 GPA requirement. They aren’t the brightest kids but they sure do work hard. The kids see a light show and the troll hunter runs up and yells “Troll!” at them and they stand around discussing Julia Louis-Dreyfuss for a while. Not really. They run after him and keep asking about this troll thing. One of the kids gets bitten and his car gets messed up by the troll. The hunter decides to drag them along because he’s tired of the job which makes him even more bad ass.
Throughout the movie we are given some background on the trolls. Exposure to UV light either makes them blow up or turn to stone depending on age. And here’s where I ran into my few complaints about the movie. The first complaint is that we see the trolls a bit too much. The effects aren’t bad but they begin to feel a little over-exposed after a while. The other is that the trolls can smell the blood of Christians. The hunter mentions in passing that trolls can reach ages of 1000-1200 years old. I’d assume that trolls pre-date Christianity and I have no idea why trolls have such a grievance against them. I’d think that belief in Norse gods might piss them off more. If the movie explained it I must have missed it. I guess we could conclude that Christian belief is based around midi-chlorians or something.
The movie hums along nicely while the hunter trys to solve the mystery of why the trolls are acting erratic. The solution isn’t really anticlimactic and fits along fine with the rest of the movie.
Should you watch this? Yes, yes you should.
Nice review. Man, I wanted to say the Christian blood thing was an actual reference to Scandinavian mythology, could have swore I read that somewhere but apparently it is a type of homage to the old Fee Fi Fo Fum rhyme. I thought it was kind of cool, but I didn't really catch on to the whole predating Christianity thing.
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