Sunday 25 December 2011

Troll Hunter (2010) @ Trolljegeren

At a glance:
Not quite your run-of-the-studio adaptation of Three Billy Goats Gruff, Troll Hunter (native: Trolljegeren) is filmmaker André Øvredal’s idea of punctuatin Norwegian folklore with Blair Witch Project box office sensibilities to deliver a winsome monster movie that doubles as a “found footage” moc-doc masterpiece deservin of all the distribution attention it gets.We follow three Volga college teens who are shooting an assignment - host Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), female sound recordist Johanna (Johanna Morck) and scaredy-cat cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen, mostly offscreen but given a memorable character arc) as they happen to land themselves the chance of a lifetime - filmin a supposed bear poacher (Otto Jespersen) who turns out to be a modern day Van Helsing-type reluctant hero who spends his days annihilatin trolls that are being kept secret by the government.
Bad news on the doorstep:
It's not very classically dramatic and you don't get silly romantic subplots or heroic climaxes, if that's your idea of a good monster movie.
Perennial wonderment:
Why can't they come up with somethin new in the monster movies genre like how this film has done? The great thing about Troll Hunter is what a delightfully technical horror movie it is. Adequately underpinned by a biological context on how these trolls can exist and subsist, its persuasive style is further helped by some useful dry Scandinavian horror (“Hey what about Muslims? Can they sniff out Muslim blood just like Christian blood? I don’t know, let’s find out") and keeps us glued in-universe throughout. The suspenseful narrative here never takes a backseat and the CGI decisions cleverly avoids overdoin things to the point of losin the audience. The monsters (they come in different subspecies even) are woolly creations that start getting iffy in scenes where they appear in their entirety – but fortunately the backstory and also the traditional FX work (boiled fur soup resin, used for applyin troll scent) is diligent and solid.
Reminds me of:
Cloverfield (2008), Blair Witch Project (1999), The Mist (2007) and [REC] (2007).
Most memorable line:
"Do you think Michael Moore gave up after the first try?"
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
The day this film opened in the U.S. a horror movie website announced that American director Chris Columbus and his company 1492, along with CJ Entertainment & Media, had acquired remake rights. Watch this now in its native Norwegian (or English-dubbed, in some territories) before Hollywood messes it up.