Trollhunter

Trollhunter (Trolljegeren) (2010)

Runtime: 103 minutes

Directed by: Andre Ovredal

Starring: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen

From: Several Norwegian companies with long hard to spell names

After watching something very obscure I watched a pretty well-known recent foreign genre movie, from the lands of Norway. The Letterboxd review is below and I'll return tomorrow night.

After watching something super obscure to start off this month, I decided to watch a popular foreign film ever since it came out in 2010. This was back in the time before people started to tire of the found footage genre, but this seems to be one of the higher rated ones out of that subgenre, which seems to be populated with total dreck.

The plot is that three young filmmakers start off doing a documentary about a suspected bear poacher but it turns out that he's actually the title character and they end up following him watching what exactly he does, which is supposed to be a secret as it's a government conspiracy (I imagine it's a worldwide thing to think that your country's government covers up major events). The whole field is explained and you see how they're eradicated, the different varieties, how they live, etc.

The whole thing is a little far fetched but you go with it as the movie treats it seriously. It's tongue in cheek but is done with total seriousness. Now, I am not insulting the folklore of that region of the world. It's just that some of those trolls are very large, as in 50 feet or more. Still, the world is rich (e.g., as it's the government, you have to file paperwork after each troll killed) and that is a big help and kept me interested the entire time, even if the other characters aren't too developed and Hans the Troll Hunter is the crux of the focus... it is a great character and I liked the performance from Otto Jespersen.

Also assets were that with the low budget (I understand only the equivalent of a few million American dollars) the trolls weren't shown too often. They looked fine the times you do see them; if they would have shown up more often, they'd probably look crappy with the budget. The natural scenery of Norway was a big plus. From what I've seen all the Scandinavian countries are absolutely beautiful and that is in full effect here; I enjoyed gawking at that.

While this is more a fun movie than a scary one, it's still enjoyable and just a pleasant experience.