TROLL HUNTER (DVD/Blu-ray Review)

Review by Jeremy Webster on
http://www.fangoria.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5581:troll-hunter-dvdblu-ray-review&catid=58:dvd-blu-ray-reviews&Itemid=182

While not exploding into North American horror consciousness quite the way J-horror flicks did in the early and mid-2000s, Scandinavian genre cinema has found a foothold, courtesy of recent quality films such as RARE EXPORTS and SAUNA from Finland and Sweden’s LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. Now on DVD and Blu-ray is a Norwegian representative in the form of TROLL HUNTER, courtesy of Magnolia’s Magnet imprint.

Another entry in the currently popular first-person-perspective subgenre, TROLL HUNTER unspools its “found footage” as a documentary three university students allegedly shot before mysteriously disappearing. Early in the film, they discover that a supposed bear poacher named Hans (Otto Jespersen) actually works for a covert Norwegian government agency called the Troll Security Service. His job: killing trolls that become nuisances or a danger to human civilization while keeping the truth that trolls really exist secret from the civilian population. While at first dismissive of the young filmmakers, Hans eventually decides to allow them to tag along to film him doing his job. Through Hans, the students discover an undercover world of nature conservationism, scientific research, political bureaucracy and corporate interest that’s just as interrelationally problematic as such organizations tend to be in public knowledge.

The cast is talented and convincing. Jespersen—a popular television comedian in Norway—is the anchor of the cast, and he ably and impressively portrays the deadpan, ever-sober Hans, who serves as the central figure in the “documentary” and, therefore, TROLL HUNTER as a whole. As far as monster hunters go, he is the anti-Quint; where the legendary JAWS shark hunter played so memorably by Robert Shaw was a 20th-century Captain Ahab with dark emotional trauma driving him to obsession and insanity in his quest to kill a monster, Hans is a nonplussed, impersonal working man doing his job. The students realize Hans is basically a folk hero the folk know nothing about, but when they point it out to him, he humbly dismisses the notion entirely. In fact, his whole reason for allowing the kids to tag along and film him in action is because he’d like an audience to see what he goes through in an occupation that supplies what he considers comparatively poor compensation.

A crucial element in the success of mockumentary-style films is the believability of the world we see on screen. TROLL HUNTER isn’t constructed to be as tension-heavy as most of the films this subgenre has given us, but offers a stronger real-world aesthetic than most. Granted, there’s a good amount of hunting—and running away from—trolls, but between those sequences, the film takes the time to explain and justify its milieu. Most of it is wonderfully clever. Old tires partially buried at roadsides aren’t just flats left by careless motorists, but indicators whether or not trolls have crossed their boundaries (trolls use them as chew toys). Sometimes high power lines are actually electric fencing to keep the beasts within their borders. A few moments in which we’re shown the lengths the political dimwits are willing to go to in order to keep the truth about trolls secret aren’t necessarily as plausible, but the film’s dry sense of humor in such scenes makes up for it.

The trolls themselves are magnificently realized with excellent CG FX and audio work. TROLL HUNTER also wisely presents its creatures in progressively more dangerous situations involving more monstrous trolls than before, making each “hunt” a new experience for the viewer. If there’s any real flaw here, it lies in the fact that it doesn’t seem like writer/director Andre Øvredal thought through the biology of his trolls as deeply as he should have, resulting in a few incongruities in comparison with the realism of the rest of the scenario. The creatures’ humanlike intelligence from myth has been left behind, leaving them as giant, dimwitted animals; yet despite some pseudoscientific reasonings behind weird traits like their apparently ability to survive by eating rocks, knowing and hunting down Christians by the smell of their blood and vulnerability to sunlight, aren’t explained at all. The movie also suffers from the usual frustrating conclusion the mockumentary genre drops in our lap so often. It has no real ending; the footage just stops when, as the disclaimer at the beginning hints, continued filming became impossible for the characters.

The audio and video quality of the TROLL HUNTER Blu-ray is excellent. The 1.78:1 views of Norway’s countrysides, forests and mountains will make you want to go there on vacation, while the excellent digital FX bringing the trolls to life in these surroundings may have you thinking twice. Not that you’d really believe in them, of course, but you never know… As a found-footage film, of course, this isn’t supposed to appear as pristine as, say, PLANET EARTH, and picky viewers would do well to remember this fact. The default audio setting is six-channel, 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio in Norwegian with English subtitles; for those who aren’t into reading so much, there’s a second DTS-HD Master Audio track with an English dub.

The discs also come with a smattering of supplemental material, and it’s somewhat a mixed bag. A 23-minute behind-the-scenes segment is fun, given that its clips are more or less candid moments of the cast and crew being silly or whatever while working. A six-minute visual FX segment presents a series of video montages showing how trolls and troll-related CG elements were incorporated into the existing footage, but these are relatively brief and there’s no explanation or commentary whatsoever. The deleted/extended material and an “Improv and Bloopers” segment are both very short and neither contains much that’s very interesting, though an extended version of the “Troll Basics” scene in the diner definitely validates the “Extended Scenes” segment. The photo galleries primarily consist of monster concept sketches and photographs of many of the film’s locations, while a four-minute “HDNet: A Look At Trollhunter” featurette serves as more a promotional piece than anything, essentially playing up the attempt to create a believable reality onscreen. All supplemental materials are in high definition on the Blu-ray.

Rated PG-13, TROLL HUNTER is not gory in the slightest, and it isn’t going to deliver that continuous nailbiting tension you got from something like, say, [REC], which might turn off certain horror purists. On the other hand, great effort went into creating a world of dark fantastic wonder hidden just beneath the veneer of the mundane—a world where 100-foot monsters can kick SUVs around like soccer balls. While the mockumentary subgenre is starting to wear itself a little thin due to proliferation, TROLL HUNTER has plenty of unique elements that make it a very satisfying experience in its own right.