Trollhunter(2011)- User Reviews

A Norwegian film shot as a documentary bridging the line between comedy, fantasy and thrilling horror, about a man who hunts trolls doesn’t get much better than “Troll Hunter”. Some parts of the film are a little slow, and the viewer has to concentrate on subtitles and the characters’ movement to experience the film. However, this is what gives the film its authenticity. Director Andr� �vredal (“Future Murder”) worked with well-known comedians and relatively new actors alongside the CGI trolls to create this mocumentary. The story begins with the intrigue a group of film students has in a man known as a bear poacher in Western Norway named Hans (Otto Jespersen, Norwegian Television Comedian). Hans refuses to interview with them numerous times, but this fails to dissuade the group from following him on his mysterious afterhours expeditions. Dead bears continue to show up each morning in different areas showing a strong connection with Hans. This finally leads the group to follow Hans into a dangerous, off-limits gated area. Their curiosity gets the best of them when Hans comes running towards them yelling “Troll!”, but is he serious? Regardless they flee the scene, but not all of them come away unscathed. Fear and excitement fill their eyes as their film about bear poaching turns into a journey to uncover the truth behind the legend of trolls and the enigmatic troll hunter.

“Troll Hunter” combines a simplistic idea with a straightforward story and uses the perfect medium to capture its development. The film is slowly paced in order to fully cultivate the characters, but fast enough to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. The stand out performance in the film comes from the obdurate frolics of Otto Jespersen. He acts as a double threat by coercing the audience into feeling uneasy while procuring belly laughs in the most ridiculous situations. The oddity of his character is further revealed as his nonchalant yet serious dialogue and actions as he fights realistically comical CGI trolls causing throwback to the “Creature Feature” days.

After the first appearance of a troll on film the subsequent troll encounters become somewhat repetitive in their development. Even so, the biggest problem the film has is with its secondary storyline concerning the character injured in the first troll encounter. The repercussions of the injury received are disregarded until late in the film. To make matters worse the ending sequence in the film is based off of this undeveloped plot tangent. Lastly, audiences may have a hard time focusing on both the shaky documentary style filming and the English subtitles.

A rawer simplistic version of “District 9” about the different species of trolls and the job of a man to keep them in check. The ending isn’t as satisfying as it should have been, but it is still laugh out loud funny, gripping, exhilarating and downright cool.