REVIEW: Trollhunter

If there's one way to sell me on your monster movie, it's to introduce an original or lesser-utilized monster. We've seen sharks and clowns and spiders done a million times over; when a film like Trollhunter comes along, daring to showcase trolls as the primary threat (especially in a post-Troll 2 world), it warrants a certain amount of kudos right out of the gate for at least daring to be different. Anyone can come up with a hackneyed excuse for a giant snake or a werewolf to tear people apart, but it's in the realm of lesser known (or even completely original) beasts that films like Trollhunter and The Babadook grab my attention from the get-go. Which begs the question, did Trollhunter hold my attention and offer something worthwhile for my troubles?

Taking the form of a found-footage documentary, the film follows college filmmaker Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) and his film crew as they investigate a suspected bear poacher by the name of Hans (Otto Jespersen). As the name of the film would imply, Hans is in fact not a hunter of bears, but of trolls. As the film goes on to explain, trolls are very real and present a very legitimate threat to the good people of Norway; to counteract this threat, the government pays Hans to keep the troll population in check. Changing the topic of their documentary to the infinitely more intriguing topic of troll control, the crew tags along with Hans, filming his exploits as he tries to uncover the reason why trolls have been reacting more aggressively as of late, wandering outside of their territories towards more populated areas.

As the film began, I settled in for yet another found footage horror film, most likely taking place entirely in the nice, cheap woods of Norway. What I got instead was a curious combination of monster movie, fantasy film, and nature documentary that I was not at all prepared for. The darkly comedic tone and the grounded way it approached the biology and ecology of trolls from Norwegian folklore blended sublimely, resulting in a genuinely interesting narrative that had me hanging on every last subtitled word. This is a film that approaches the idea of trolls as if they were real animals, yet manages to provide explanations for each fantastical aspect of the creatures we see in fairy tales (except for their uncanny ability to sniff out the blood of a Christian man, which is left unexplained). It's B-movie science, sure, but it's framed in a way that grounds the entire premise without losing the mystique of the folk tales which inspired it.

For a film that is carried by its premise and characters, the special effects aren't necessarily a high priority. That said, with the exception of one scene, I found the CGI on the various species of trolls to be quite solid, given the low-key, almost casual tone of the film. Unfortunately, the only moment where the special effects are notably less-than-stellar is arguably when visuals count the most; the scene in which we first catch sight of a troll. That's the thing about first impressions, you only get to make one. While every species of troll we encounter in the film is visually interesting and genuinely threatening, the camera lingers on the first of such species, the three-headed Tosserlad, for far too long, really allowing us to see right through the special effect. It's a moment in which a good deal of discretion would have been far more effective, despite it being an already fun, exciting sequence.

Aside from some dodgy CGI and far more scenic shots of fjords than were necessary, I found Trollhunter to be an entertaining, inspired approach to the standard woodland found-footage monster flick. It's equal parts original and silly, yet nothing feels truly out of place in terms of tone. It's a film that very clearly knows what it wants to be and what it wants to do, and I feel as though it by and large succeeded in achieving those goals. If you're looking for something wholly unique that's just tons of fun, then I highly recommend you give André Øvredal's Trollhunter a watch.