Sundance 2011 Review: THE TROLL HUNTER
The Troll Hunter is a "found footage" movie set in Norway that follows three college students as they discover a man who claims to be hunting trolls. I hate to spoil things for you, but he's not lying – trolls are real, and many of the rules associated with them are true.
Right from the start, I had problems with this movie. It cribs its opening from Paranormal Activity, claiming to be real footage unedited and not enhanced in any way. That's fine until the movie properly begins and this “unedited” footage they claim to have discovered in this exact state is already pretty seamlessly edited into the form of a feature film. The trio of young filmmaker characters consist of Kalle the cameraman, Johanna running sound, and the on-air guy Thomas, so we assume each of them is a necessary element to the success of their fictional film within the film. Not so. Johanna disappears into the woods for an entire chase sequence, but the sound – which should stay with her since she's holding the boom – stays with the cameraman and his cohort as they stumble and rumble through their own section of the forest. (There are two scenarios possible here: either Johanna was using a wireless connection from the boom to the camera and The Troll Hunter filmmaker screwed up the sound design in this scene, or the characters were using an external microphone built onto the camera, which would render Johanna's skills utterly useless. Either way, it's not pretty.)
The acting was lackluster all around, and the story wasn't compelling enough to last for an entire feature length movie. This would work much better as one of those YouTube shorts that people have been using to audition for feature films; for all I know, it may well have started that way. It nearly put me to sleep at several points as scenes repeated themselves to seemingly no end: the group runs into a location (woods, cave, open field), trolls appear, the group gets frantic, Hans (the titular Troll Hunter) fires a blast of light at the creatures, which either causes them to explode or turn to stone. Wait twenty minutes, repeat. That's the entirety of this movie. It promises troll hunting and delivers, but if you're looking for anything more than that, you're out of luck.
A large part of the plot revolves around the trolls being able to smell the blood of Christians. There's also an offhand comment made when a new camerawoman comes into the picture and says she's a Muslim; Thomas asks the Troll Hunter (keeper of all Troll knowledge) if she'll be safe, and he says, “I honestly don't know. We'll find out soon enough.” Interestingly, this is not the first movie to heavily feature religious themes at this year's festival. Red State, The Ledge, and even Cedar Rapids have strong religious undertones (or, in Red State's case, overtones), and that's just from the selection that I've seen out here so far. Apparently Sundance 2011 is the year of cults, religion, and hippies.
I can't in good conscience recommend this to anyone other than people who would see it based on the title alone. The Troll Hunter definitely isn't the worst movie I've seen here, but it doesn't even approach the middle of the pack either. I'd stay far away from this one, although, ironically, it will probably be one of the easiest to track down thanks to the fantastic folks at Magnet Releasing. It's already played at a few festivals across the country, so if you've already had the chance to see it, let us know what you think about it in the comments section.