TROLLHUNTER (Dir. André Øvredal, 2010)
With its opening text telling us that this film is a rough cut made from 283 minutes of footage found in an anonymous package received by the Norwegian production outfit Filmkameratene, there's an undeniable BLAIR WITCH PROJECT vibe going on, but don't worry because TROLLHUNTER is a much better, and more thoroughly thought out horror mockumentary.
And it's funnier and scarier than BLAIR WITCH too.
In choppy yet very watchable chunks resembling digital video we follow a 3 Valda college student film crew (Tomas Alf Larsen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, and Johanna Mørck) as they investigate a series of mysterious bear killings.
The trio stalk a hunter (Otto Jesperson) who they believe is a poacher, but one dark crazy night they learn different. Jesperson refuses an interview initially, but after they witness some shit go down he lets them tag along, and before long they witness him killing an amusingly animated giant 3-headed troll.
The grizzled Jesperson, who is working for the government (the "Troll Security Service") and has to fill out "Slain Troll Forms" after every killing, warns the youngsters that the trolls can smell Christian blood. This he shares along with other tricks of the trade, and random bitching about European bureaucracy.
We learn that the troll problem has spread since trolls have broken out of their designated territories (Jesperson points to normal looking power lines informing us that they are "electric fences to keep the trolls at bay").
The film concludes with a gritty dawn-lit showdown with a King Kong-sized troll called a Jotnar in the snow covered mountains of Norway that has moments of genuine grip.
Although it drags in places, TROLLHUNTER is a crafty comic thriller of a mockumentary that is played so straight that it feels convincing, that is when there aren't CGI-ed trolls on screen.
Special Features: Deleted Scenes, Bloopers, Extended Scenes, Visual Effects, a "Behind the Scenes" featurette, Photo Galleries, and HDNet: A Look at TROLLHUNTER.
More later...
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