The Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren)(2010)

Review by Sam O'Beirn



I’m half dutch. When I was growing up, I had a book that my mother had bought for me in Holland simply called “Gnomes”. It was, and still is, my favorite of all my childhood books, and the only one I own that I still have. This book was a “Mock Field Guide” to the potential gnome-hunter, and explained how they lived, and how they worked in their woodland society. They even had a chapter on the dangers that gnomes faced in the wild, along with woodland enemies. One of their enemies was the Troll. The picture in the book always scared me a little, and because of that, I think it fascinated me as well. And I think that’s what lead me to this odd gem of a movie.
The Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren in the original Norwegian) is the second film by Norwegian film director André Øvredal. It follows in the same vein as The Blair Witch Project, in that it’s passed off as found footage, filmed by a group of film students from a local university. There, the similarity ends. The students are trying to track down the cause of a recent storm of bears being killed by poachers. They manage to find the man everyone thinks is the poacher and follow him around for a while. They try to question him, and though he is openly antagonistic to them, they still follow him, until they catch him in the woods at night. The leader of this group (played by Tomas Alf Larsen) gets attacked, and while caring for him, the man takes them into his confidence and tells them the secret that the Norwegian Government wants to keep hidden: That trolls are real. The crew follows the man, and helps track down the trolls that are wandering out of their habitats. The end of the movie ends abruptly with Government agents trying to get the tapes of their exploits.
I liked this movie. The trolls were CGI, but at times you couldn’t tell. The details on them were amazing, and the fact that the writers dug so deep into Norwegian folklore to find out facts about them is a credit to him. The trolls, when they appear on film, act primitive, and slow, but you kind of expect that. There’s a great scene where the hunter is trying to lure a troll from under a bridge, by tying three goats to it, and they show you in night vision the troll taking one of the goats. The acting was fairly well done, and there were heart achingly beautiful shots of the Norway Countryside throughout the film. It was almost like a tourist ad, at times, and it took away from the film, a little.
Good effects, a surprisingly detailed and deep plot, this is a find. While the movie is only available in Norwegian, it is subtitled, and worth a watch.
(Magnet Films 8/10)