Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Troll Hunter

One of the offerings in the incredibly strange section of the film festival programme, Troll Hunter is a Norwegian mockumentary. It claims to be footage shot by 3 now missing college students who stumble upon a real-life troll hunter, who is a government employee whose raison d'etre is to keep the Norwegian populace from finding out trolls really exist. At first the Troll Hunter is very hostile and tries to shake the plucky students off his trail but he warms to them and they end up accompanying him all over Norway and encountering many different types of Troll.

It should be no surprise that Troll Hunter is very silly but it was a bit disappointing that it wasn't in the least frightening. I enjoyed the trolls themselves which were impressively large and very noisy and I enjoyed the liberal use of troll "facts" all delivered absolutely straight - that they turn to stone in bright light, that they can smell the blood of Christians, that gestation takes years, and that a string of power pylons is in fact an electric fence to keep the trolls out. I especially liked the government official creating large artificial bear paw-prints in the forest to cover up troll activity. However, it did drag a bit at times, and didn't even come vaguely close to being believable.

Anne's rating 2.5/5 Ian's rating 3/5

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