Trooooolllllllllllll! That’s the most memorable line from one of the best movies I’ve seen all year. Troll Hunter, or Trolljegeren in the original Norweigan, is a fun flick from the first frame to the last. It uses the Blair Witch formula, where students head off into the wilderness to film something, only to discover a huge secret. It’s sort of the Norwegian Super 8. And I do mean a HUGE secret…as in 200 foot tall trolls. Not those little things with big hair you see on pencil toppers and on Mimi’s desk on the Drew Carey Show, but real living, breathing, giant trolls.
Apparently trolls are popular mythos in Norway, and it was interesting to learn all about them. Think you know trolls? Here’s a pop quiz:
- How long is the gestation period of a troll? 10-15 years.
- How old can trolls live to be? 1000-1200 years.
- What are the main types of trolls? Mountain Trolls and Woodland Trolls.
- How many heads do they have? Just one, but as they age they can grow additional head like appendages.
- What do they like to eat? Seemingly anything, but they are especially partial to stone, charcoal, old tires, and Christians.
A giant mountain troll has gone rabid and has been infecting other trolls, causing them to venture into populated areas they normally would eschew. As such, Norway’s troll hunter has been called in to take care of the problem. I’d mention the actors name, but it probably has a bunch of umlauts and those Os with a line through them making them look like zeroes. He’s fantastic- if you are ever near a troll, you want this guy around.
He has ridiculous equipment that helps him battle these giants, and his suit of armor leads to one of the best moments in the film. It starts off a bit slow, but once the trolls start appearing, it’s very fun to watch. the only thing the movie was missing was a troll on troll fight, because seeing a battle between woodland and mountain trolls would have been epic. No, wait, it would have been EPIC!
The subtitles didn’t bother me one bit, since the dialog wasn’t all that important- this is a movie that is all about battling trolls. The effects were really well done. It seems like they used a lot of miniatures and stop motion techniques, instead of just the CGI that is typically done these days. The budget for this film was probably one 50th of what was spent on Green Lantern, and it looks 50 times better. It’s always good to see a film made by someone with an imagination. Well done Norway, well done.
If you need to have a review summed up with a rating, I’ll grade Troll Hunter on a scale of the size of fjords around the world, from Norway’s smallest, Svolvær, to Scoresby Sund in Greenland. Troll Hunter is a solid Sognefjord.