Film Review Troll Hunter 2010

                                    FILM REVIEW TROLL HUNTER 2010

An unexpectedly excellent subtitled Norwegian comedy horror movie, with some great special effects for a modest budget presentation. Spoiler warnings are given her for revelations discussed.

Done in the Blair-Witch Project found footage tradition, it deals with a trio of student filmmakers tracking an elusive poacher in an area of Norway ravaged by mysterious bear attacks.

Failing to secure an interview with the grizzled, rather unlikely Bear Gryllis figure, they follow him into the remote woods where they are attacked by a tree high three headed troll.  One of the students is bitten by another, as yet unseen troll, and his symptoms worsen as the film progresses. The man, known throughout, merely as Hans, flees past them with the immortal line “Run! It’s a Tosserman.”  He kills the Tosserman troll with a blast of ultraviolet light, turning it to stone.

Hans takes the students under his care, and invites them to film his exploits, though his mysterious government employees threaten to capture the footage before it can go public.

Hans lets slip that the Government knows of trolls, and monitors their territories. Hans is employed to kill any trolls escaping from the territories they have – this is normally rare but for some reason, the incidents are becoming frequent and he needs to find out why. He can tell from erratic footprints and markings that a troll (not a Tosserman) is ill, and aims to capture a blood sample from it to ascertain why, before he kills it.

Setting up three sheep on a rickety bridge over a river, (Billy Goat’s Gruff implications) Hans dons a ridiculous medieval suit of armour and waits for the sick troll with a giant syringe. It throws him down like a rag doll, and it looks pretty obvious Hans shouldn’t survive, but he gets up saying he just feels a bit shaken. He has the blood sample but chases the troll again to kill it – this troll being younger, explodes rather than turning to stone.

Trolls are mammals, Hans reveals, but with a hatred of Christians so the students are told they can only carry on filming if non-Christian. One student conceals his faith with fatal consequences. The others are atheistic.

The unlikely team find themselves trapped in a cave by a whole colony of Mountain King trolls, who find the Christian student when his faith asserts itself in a desire to pray. The others get free, and a replacement camera operator is found – a young Muslim lady – and the group go after a giant 200 foot troll that has broken free from an expensive electricity Pylon surrounded enclosure. These pylons exist in a circle, not attached to the National grid – essentially an electric fence to pen trolls in and nothing more – only when told this is a bit odd by the students does an electrical plant engineer agree that this indeed seems irregular.

A vet hired by Hans to test the troll blood tells him by phone what the problem is – the trolls have rabies – being spread through their numbers by biting fights for territory – the bitten student therefore also has rabies.

As Hans takes down the last troll, the students are chased away by the government agents. Hans just walks away from the scene and in mid chase the footage ends. Captions tell us no trace has been found of the film’s participants. The experts finding the footage consider it authentic due to Norway’s Prime Minister accidentally letting slip that the country has a troll problem in a live TV interview – and we see this footage as the credits start to role, with the real Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stollenberg playing himself. .

A terrific inventive film with formidable malevolent trolls, even the sleeping flatulent ones in the cave are nasty, and that Tosserlad line came to mind watching drunken chavs on Manchester’s Shudehill while heading for my bus. An American remake is already regrettably in the pipeline.

Arthur Chappell