A nice concept, but 'Troll Hunter' is everything I hate about found footage movies. It centres on a group of college kids who want to make a movie about bear hunting. It looks pretty real to begin with, with an ominous message at the start about how the footage was recovered and whatnot. If I was watching this I might even think it was a documentary if I had had a head injury or was below 10. And that's about as good as you can do with a movie about trolls.
I quickly got sick of the shaky camerawork and long periods of looking at the ground and listening to heavy breathing, but it did feel fairly real. A lot of it is quite funny, and while it's obviously heavily 'Blair Witch' inspired, it retains a very definite Norwegian flavour, for which I applaud it. The trolls have the classic massive nose, and many local legends are nodded too (rock throwing, christian eating, etc.). Also, everyone's mannerisms strike me as having that northern European flavour with which I suppose I am familiar.
The budget obviously wasn't huge, and the wobbly camera often shortens the viewer's sightings of the actual trolls to brief glimpses to cover up the effects, but there are a few nice shots of a really big bastard at the end (pictured) to make up for it.
I think one of the strengths of this film is that we get to see some of the inner workings of the government conspiracy in a way that we rarely do in other media in this strain. I particularly liked how small time it all felt - with reasonably few people involved, none of whom were emotionless men in black suits. The cover ups with a couple of slightly inept bear poachers and an irritated vet were a lot of fun, I only wish we had more scenes like these and less filled with shots of the ground shaking to the sound of distant roaring. The final clip of the Prime Minister revealing the existence of trolls, complete with shocked insider, was fun too, and it was very cool of him to be up for doing that.
Despite all that, when you take out all the Norwegian stuff it's very run of the mill, and I often got bored of the pacing. Perhaps it should have been a short movie.
Troll Hunter: 33.9