A Norwegian 'found-footage' comedy-horror about trolls you say? I'm there!
brilliant...
The Troll Hunter would be an excellent companion piece to the Finnish Rare Exports about killer santas. Both share a Scandinavian attitude to dark humour and feature 'mythical' beasties. And both are hilarious and, to a lesser extent, scary features that will no doubt suffer in inevitable US remakes. Troll Hunter's claim to be cobbled together from real life footage that has been recently discovered adds to the sense of silly reality that has a college film crew follow a man they think is a bear poacher... and turns out to be an employee of the government's secretive TSS (Troll Security Service). Hans (Otto Jesperson) is tired of the bureaucracy of troll hunting, and he's happy for the film crew to expose the badly paid profession and thus the reality of the existence of trolls to the Norwegian public. The film is full of great comic touches, from the TSS' use a Polish team to supply dead bears with which to create a cover story for suspicious deaths, to Hans' medieval armour used in troll baiting. The trolls themselves are effective and work well in the medium of shaky cameras as they're a much more sinister presence when not seen clearly. A great deal of thought has also gone into the designs of each troll, and the behaviour of the species, making these lumpy giants more than just mindless killers - it turns out they have rabies, so there's a real reason why they've suddenly started straying from their enclosures.
briefly...
Funny, scary, intelligent and Scandinavian. There was little chance I wouldn't enjoy this!
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