Troll Hunter

Dir: Andre Ovredal, 2010

Accepted wisdom dictates that the visual effects driven blockbuster is the sole domain of Hollywood and its giant piles of money. Recent years, however, have seen various countries encroaching on Hollywood’s territory. Korea had the surprisingly intelligent The Host; Russia gave us the narratively incomprehensible but visually stunning Night Watch; and now Norway has joined the revolution with Troll Hunter.

Using the template pioneered by The Blair Witch Project, the film follows three journalism students on the trail of Hans, who they think is a bear poacher. It turns out (as I’m sure you’ve guessed) that Hans is, in fact, a troll hunter. A government sanctioned troll hunter tasked with keeping the pesky critters away from the public.

Writer/director André Øvredal takes great delight on playing with and subverting the dense Nordic folklore concerning trolls. His often live under bridges, but won’t challenge you to an eating contest (an apparent staple of Scandinavian folktales). Their fatal weakness to sunlight is given a scientific explanation, while their ability to smell the blood of a Christian becomes something of a running gag (as is its implications for other faiths).

This playfulness accompanies a wry sense of humour, embodied by Hans himself, played by Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen. Jespersen imbues Hans with cynicism and world-weariness. At one point one of the students calls him a hero, but he is no Sigmund. Instead, Hans reminded me of Deckard in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: he is little more than a bureaucrat, a civil servant who occasionally fights trolls.

Troll Hunter isn’t all laughs, though. When the trolls turn up, we’re treated to some of the best action scenes you’ll see this year. The trolls themselves are brilliantly realised. They are by turns grotesque and pitiful (the film shows a surprising fondness for the trolls, despite their status as mindless movie monsters). Despite the film’s obvious budget constraints, the CGI is very impressive. This is due in part to the mockumentary-style cinematography; deficiencies of budget can easily be hidden behind grainy, and sometimes night-vision, camerawork.

Speaking of camerawork, the Blair Witch-inspired cinematography is nowhere near as egregious as you might think. There is a fair bit of ShakeyCam when our protagonists are running (which, thankfully, doesn’t happen that often), but when the trolls are on screen, the camera is kept mercifully stable. This could be due, in part, to the decision to make the students journalism students, rather than generic teenagers a la Cloverfield. These kids know that when a story is in front of you, instead of flailing wildly, you keep the camera on it. Which is good, because as I said, the trolls are fantastic.

They no longer belong in our world, though. Towards the end of Troll Hunter, I got the feeling that the film is almost a Western. Hans is kind of a Scandinavian cowboy: part of the old world, and something the new world could do without. When the film’s climax rolls around, there’s a real sense of an era coming to a close, as in the last roundup at the end of The Misfits.

Troll Hunter is unfortunate to be released at the beginning of autumn, a time when studios and distributors dump their less than prestigious pictures before awards season begins. Perhaps the producers wanted to avoid clashing with the summer’s more expensive blockbusters? After all, how can a little Norwegian film compete with superheroes and ape uprisings? Rest assured: it can.