Armed with a video camera, a group of Norwegian students set out to find mysterious creatures that are causing havoc in the region. During their hunt, they will discover a mysterious poacher nicknamed the “TrollHunter”.
Aaaah, Norway. Fjörds, black metal bands, whale hunting, natural gas reserves, trolls… Yes, trolls, important figures of Scandinavian mythology, that we know mainly as small deformed goblins or, at best, as beastly and nasty giants as they have been presented to us by works that have little to do with Nordic folklore. A definition that would certainly surprise Hans, a troll hunter by trade. Fortunately, here we are in his company in the Norwegian countryside to discover these creatures, thanks to a team of young students wishing to make a report.
In their company, we will discover the different species of trolls, their way of life…and the way to track them down. We learn that they can live for centuries, that some have growths resembling heads that grow with age and, above all, that they are able to detect Christian blood by smell. To fight them, you have to camouflage their smell and use UV lamps to petrify them or make them explode. If they generally stay in their territory, some of them sometimes leave it, and it is then up to Hans to shoot them and camouflage their presence to the public on behalf of the government, which does not see the presence of the young students and their camera very well.
To make us discover these creatures, André Øvredal chooses a fashionable approach these days: that of the fake documentary, of the video tape found and whose authors have disappeared. Obviously, the recurrent defects of this kind of production are present (passages where we can’t distinguish anything, scenes whose interest seems limited, credibility of such a reassembling), but I confess to have found, and it’s rare, the process rather relevant, especially in this idea of meeting an unknown creature that we discover at the same time as the young students. And above all, this does not prevent us from seeing the trolls, on the contrary: they are regularly present on the screen, especially thanks to the night vision of the camera.
Abandoning the tension that he could have created during the minutes in which the trio, in pursuit of Hans, wanders without a landmark in the woods, Øvredal favors an approach that includes more action, each troll appearance being the occasion for spectacular scenes, until a truly monstrous finale. The presence of the creatures is surprising, considering the low budget, which would have allowed for a certain discretion of the creatures. However, we are doubly surprised: the film shows us the trolls in a clear way, and they benefit from impeccable special effects! The opportunity to discover really repulsive monsters but all benefiting from a certain personality, allowing us sometimes to have fun in front of their appearance, the director having taken care to show us several of the species mentioned by the hunter Hans. He is also the most interesting character by far. Jaded by his job as a troll hunter, risky and poorly paid, he agrees to participate in the reportage despite the government’s desire to keep all these affairs secret. In his activity, he is supported by a government agent, who is in charge of camouflaging the attacks, generally passing them off as bear attacks, and by a scientist who analyses the samples obtained by the hunter.
Benefiting from the sumptuous Norwegian landscapes, “The Troll Hunter” goes beyond the simple Blair Witch – like to offer us a really successful fantasy film about creatures that we rarely have the opportunity to see. Øvredal multiplies the details around his trolls, sometimes immersing us in a real documentary, and gives us some really spectacular passages, whose efficiency is reinforced by the quality of the special effects. It almost makes you want to take warm clothes and go troll hunting, if only it was well paid!
