October Horror 2011: Day 19 - Troll Hunter

Troll Hunter is a 2010 Norwegian movie released stateside in June 2011.

The found footage in this case comes from hard drives containing digital video shot by a group of film students who start the movie pursuing an alleged bear poacher.  They overstep just far enough to get involved with the poacher, who turns out to be Hans: Norway's only registered Troll Hunter.  Hans' job is to exterminate trolls who go outside of their territorial boundaries, or venture to a place where humans might discover them.  They begin following Hans as he tries to discover why so many trolls have fled their designated areas.

Ultra violet light causes trolls to violently explode or calcify depending on their age, and they have an insatiable craving for the blood of a Christian man.

There's nothing exceptional about the found footage camera work or premise.  In fact the camera gets annoying sometimes taping things that it doesn't seem like a rational person would tape.

However, the special effects were pretty nice.  They played off the uncanny valley-ness of modern CGI by designing trolls that looked a bit silly on purpose.  But the way they moved and the proportion and placement in the scene made them seem real, but still wrong somehow.  The effect of which is that you feel they really don't belong in the scene but it could just be because you're looking at a TROLL and it just doesn't make sense to your brain.

The story was compelling, if a bit simple, and the troll scenes were very tense.  The final boss was epic in the truest sense of the word.  The relative difference in size between the troll and the battle tankified jeep was mind boggling.  The ending of the found footage was a bit weak, but the post-epilogue bit of the state official was actually pretty fun.

Definitely worth watching for action, thrills, it's a little scary but more in the dark fantasy way than the horror way.  Good stuff, those Norwegian movies.

Next up: Evil Things