Troll Hunter

Released by: Magnolia Films
Released on: 8/23/2011
Director: Andre Ovredal
Cast: Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Otto Jespersen
Year: 2011
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The Movie:

You'll plop Andre Ovredal's Troll Hunter into your Blu-ray player and probably immediately groan once you see the disclaimer that what you're about to see is footage recovered from an expedition - once again, a filmmaker has decided to go back to the Blair Witch well (or Cannibal Holocaust well or Man Bites Dog well if you prefer) and opted to bombard us with more 'found footage.' Cloverfield proved that you could still get a box office hit with this tactic, so why not? It's got to be easier than staging and lighting ever scene the way you would with a traditional movie, so let's just take the easy way out. Except then the movie starts and once it picks up and starts pulling you in, you realize that this isn't a cop out on Ovredal's part, rather, it's the right format for the story he's trying to tell.

The movie follows three college students - a would be director named Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), his adorable blonde sound engineer Johanna (Johanna Morck), and their cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) - as they head out into a remote part of Norway to shoot a documentary on a series of vicious bear attacks reported to be occurring in the region. Once they get there they hear of a poacher named Hans (Otto Jespersen) who has supposedly been killing off all of the problematic bears, but when they succeed in tracking him down, he wants nothing to do with him. Curious about this strange character, they decide to follow him through the area until, after they track him to some dark and mysterious looking woods, they see him come barreling out of the forest screaming about trolls - and then Thomas gets bitten.

So as you could probably figure out from the title at this point, Hans is not a bear hunter but a troll hunter working for a top secret agency and there really aren't any bear attacks going on in the area, but troll attacks. Once Hans realizes that the student filmmakers are onto him, he figures why not enjoy a little company for once, and then allows them to follow him around, camera in tow. What they learn, however, is that trolls are not just the stuff of fairly tales, but are quite real and quite dangers - possibly even more dangerous than bears.

While it's probably hard for a certain segment of this site's readership to not automatically think about a certain Claudio Fragasso movie any time 'troll cinema' comes up, Ovredal's film is nothing like the so called worst movie ever made. Rather, it's a fairly clever picture that does an interesting job of tapping into Norwegian mythology and bringing it into the modern world. There's a sense of humor behind much of the film, there probably has to be to a certain extent when dealing with trolls and what not, but it's dry enough and played straight enough that it never takes you out of the movie. As such, we wind up with a few scenes that are actually very suspenseful and, at times, quite a bit creepier than most viewers will probably have expected.

The performances are strong throughout, each actor well cast and fitting his or her role well, but the star of the show, and this should come as no surprise given the importance of the character to the film, is Otto Jespersen as Hans. Perfectly crotchety and gleefully grumpy, he's part Indiana Jones and part Quint, on an adventure to deal with a monster and not about to let anyone else screw it up, let alone a trio of kids with a camcorder. He carries the film, as he should as he's interesting and amusing and believably tough, but the rest of the cast are good here too.

The film moves at a good pace and even if it takes about twenty minutes or so to really start moving. Once it does, and it finds its stride, we find ourselves on a bizarre but enjoyable ride through a uniquely Norwegian landscape. Beautifully photographed and even a bit educational (you'll learn a lot about the mythology of Norway's trolls from this movie!) this one builds to a great climax and turns out to be a lot of fun.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Meant to look like 'found footage' shot by a trio of college kids running around chasing trolls and troll hunters, the movie isn't slick but Magnolia's transfer does a good job with what was probably some rather iffy source material. Shot on digital video there are no problems with grain or print damage, obviously, while color reproduction is handled well. Black levels look good too, but the dark scenes and night vision scenes are pretty noisy - this all comes down to the source material though. All in all, you can't really complain about how this disc looks as, quite simply, it looks like it's supposed to look.

The Norwegian DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track is the way to go here, as surround use is fairly constant and well played (if not always in keeping with the 'this is real footage'
Motif). Levels are well balanced and the dialogue is clean and consistent while the low end has some good punch to it. Optional subtitles are available in English and Spanish and an optional English dub is also supplied, in DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio as well.

There aren't a ton of extras here but Magnolia has thrown in a few extras, the best of which is a twenty-three minute Behind The Scenes featurette that shows us what it was like on set making this movie out in the forests of Norway. All involved seem to be having a blast as even things that should seem like hard work, such as setting up shots and dealing with technical issues, come across as enjoyable and fun. You watch this and you kind of wish you could hop into the TV and hang out with these guys!

Aside from that, there are two minutes of bloopers, three minutes of deleted scenes, eight minutes of marginally extended scenes, and a seven minute look at how some of the special effects in the movie were done. There's also a still gallery, an HDNet promo spot, a trailer for the feature, trailers for a few other Magnolia releases, menus and chapter stops. Each and every one of the extras on this disc is in high definition.

The Final Word:

Troll Hunter earns some pretty substantial bonus points for taking a ridiculous concept, wrapping it up in an overused and played out style and managing to make it work. The film turned out to be an unexpectedly entertaining and creative surprise and a movie well worth watching. Magnolia's Blu-ray is the right way to do just that.

Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!