Troll Hunter: Folklore Turned Reality

Remember The Blair Witch Project? The confusion? The nauseating camera work? The distracting lack of plot that was supposed to capture “reality”? Well in response, writer/director Andre Overdal has given us a fun trek into the Norwegian, fjordian, mountainous, tundric (is that even a word?) wilderness with his Troll Hunter. And I didn’t even need Dramamine.

Three intrepid university students (armed with a camera, a boom mic, and a lot of questions) are tracking down a mysterious man (Otto Jespersen, credited as “Trolljegeren” or “Troll Hunter”) who has been allegedly killing bears without the appropriate bear-killing licenses. The students follow a lead and find his dilapidated trailer. It reeks and there are strange furs hanging inside it. When the Troll Hunter arrives in his Range Rover, however, they notice missing bits of fender and long claw-like gouges along its exterior, but he brushes off the question of the student interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) and goes inside. Later that evening, when the three students follow him into a desolate forest, they find out what he is really hunting and barely escape with their lives. They decide that they must stay on this story because it is too big to let it alone. The Troll Hunter begrudgingly agrees, so long as they do exactly as he says, and an adventure into this unknown world begins.

This film keeps in mind the enjoyment of an audience that is engaged in a “what if” scenario. A reality-based world is created within this piece, but the director stops short of slavish-devotion to that world. So nit-pickers can nay-say, but the tight editing and small “unrealistic” inconsistencies are what really pulls the story along and keeps it from dragging. The “un-realities,” in effect, make this movie more real for the audience—and that is the writer’s job.

It is very clear that the excellent timing of this film existed in the script first because it runs so smoothly. Overdal did his homework and made sure to incorporate the sequences, the main plot points, sub plot, added depth and emotion through character, etc. Because these elements are there, this film is transformed from a cool cinematic experiment to a re-watchable narrative that a person can live in.

And just as Overdal mastered this tale, the cast mastered the telling of it. The Troll Hunter himself (Otto Jespersen) is the wonderful gruff, dependable, and lonely hero. Student interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) is the perfect wry yet cowardly explorer. The boom mic-toting student Johanna (Johanna Morck) is at one moment defiantly brazen and at the other completely terror stricken. Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen), the student cameraman who is mainly off-screen, is in perfect tandem with the visuals presented to us, creating a heightened sense of realism. And the mysterious sour-faced Finn (Hans Morten Hansen), and the jovial Polish bear hunter (Robert Stoltenberg) bring appropriately-timed levity between the more serious parts of the film.

This film draws you in, through characters you can empathize with, to an exciting adventure that is fraught with peril and weirdness. Humor is applied in appropriate doses, and so is fear and confusion.

If you’re going to compare this to The Blair Witch Project (which you are), you will notice that there is a quainter, smarmier quality to the main characters. In addition, you actually get to see the antagonist(s)—and they look pretty cool. And you may also notice that the inclusion of the haggard tough-guy Troll Hunter acts as a guide for the audience as well as the unknowing university student characters. He’s the through line, the carrot on the stick, the thing that pushes things along. We are focused on Trolls as opposed to being focused on GPS coordinates and maps. And I, for one, prefer the Trolls.