At The Movies: Troll Hunter (or, who’s coming to Norway with us?)

I went to a healthfood shop today and bought NATURE SNACKS. Now, I don’t normally go into healthfood shops because I can’t understand their pitch. What’s all this marketing to people’s paranoia and fears about their bodies? Why do I go in and get a copy of HEALTH magazine in my face, adorned with a willowy, glowing woman telling me to lose weight and eat seeds? What’s all that about? I think they market their wares wrong. Instead of telling us to EAT FRUIT OUT OF FEAR OF FATNESS OR SIN, they should be all, MOTHERFUCKING NATURE SNACKS!! LOOK, THEY’RE MADE OUT OF TREES AND SHIT!!! EAT THESE AND BECOME KING OF THE FUCKING ELVES!!!!

Troll Hunter, though, gets its pitch exactly right. “TROLL HUNTER!!!” shouts the poster, in yellow, with a gritty picture of Hans The Troll Hunter’s well-defended Land Rover driving towards the legs of a truly gigantic troll. That’s what we like to see. Gets straight to the point. This is a film about a man who hunts trolls, and the trolls aren’t fucking around. That’s what it is.

That tagline, guys.

Now, I’d read a few précis of André Øvredal‘s film before I went to see it, which is something I generally avoid doing because I like to go to a film all clean of bias, but it would have been hard to remove my firmly-lodged desire to see this film, because fuck I love monsters. All the opinions I’d read started with something like, “I didn’t expect this to be hand-held-camera Blair Witch mockumentary style!” so naturally, I expected that.

However, given that information, I expected it to be a horror film about some kids who make a film about trolls.

It’s not. It’s a film about trolls.

It is literally a film all about trolls. It’s not even a horror film about trolls. It’s just about trolls. You get to know about all the different sorts of troll, how long they live, what they eat, how long their gestation period is, and what they like to do with car tyres. It’s also a sensitive portrait of the hunter, Hans (Otto Jespersen), and his lifelong symbiotic relationship with them and their territorial warfare. He’s sort of like the stoic, outdoorsy, very smelly grandpa you always wanted. He’s not your typical big, ripply, macho action hero. He’s like a grumpy, landmine-collecting Sir David Attenborough. With a beard. And landmines. I found myself, as the credits rolled to In The Hall Of The Mountain King, wanting to go to Norway immediately and try and find him and look at trolls with him.

The whole film runs, as you can imagine from something that’s shot on a hand-held camera ostensibly by film students, completely devoid of soundtrack, but that somehow makes it more immediate, more intimate: it’s peppered with little details that make it feel very real, and all the people in it less like characters that have been written and cast, but more like ordinary people, with their own failings and idiosyncrasies.  To illustrate this I need to give a mild spoiler away, so skip the rest of this paragraph if you’re invested in being entirely spoiler free! In the first troll chase, the sound techie girl (Johanna Mørck) is lost, and we presume her dead, having possibly been eaten by a ten-foot-tall troll. But she emerges from the forest, wild-eyed and grinning, practically crying with delight that the fairy-tale monsters are really real.¹ She’s neither mangled, nor screaming, nor in need of comfort, rescue or first-aid – she’s absolutely thrilled, and still clutching her boom mike. For a film that’s all about monsters and the man that hunts them, this is a very human film.

It’s also hilarious, which was another thing I wasn’t expecting. I laughed like an audience-disturbing drain at some points (seriously, never go to see a film with me, I’m awful) and clapped like a delighted child at others (see? awful). The humour and humanity help it feel true, which in turn makes the danger feel really dangerous and the tension feel really tense. It’s deeply engrossing for it.

The only thing is, it’s so different from any other film currently on offer – and indeed different from similar shaky-cam freak-fests that preceded it (hello, Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, I’m looking at you) – that it might take some viewers a little while to get into. You have to adapt. You don’t really watch it the same way that you usually watch films. It helps by giving you a soundtrack-free plain text introduction to the film as being a collection of recordings anonymously dropped off at a studio, which certainly got me into the right mindset, but your mileage may vary.

Basically, this is what’d happen if I was told to make a horror film about werewolves. It’d just end up as a film about werewolves and what they do. This is a film, then, that is about trolls and what they do. It will make you want to go and look at trolls. (But don’t go if you’re a Christian because they can smell you.)

Not pictured: the Jainist cameraman.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• It’s all about the monsters and how they fit into human life, and if you like monsters, folklore and learning about different cultures, you’ll love it
• It’s pretty much unique in its combination of how it’s shot and what it offers
• It’s really, unexpectedly funny
• The people feel real, solid and …people-y
• TROLLS!!!!!!!

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• I don’t know, you might take exception to the recurring theme of them being able to smell (and liking to eat) Christians
• Shaky-cam doesn’t agree with everyone (I found it challenging to watch in parts)
• I might be in the cinema, periodically shrieking and weeping and no-one needs that

1. This bit made me cry. WHO’S SURPRISED :D [↩]