Horror has been hard done by in the past few years. The rot started with the truly dire Buffy the Vampire series that begat Twilight, Vampire Diaries and countless other vacuous, bland, painting by number, cookie cutter pseudo-horror trash with pretty teen vampires. There have been one or two gems such as Being Human, Outcast and Cloverfield but overall the genre has been emasculated by lack of imagination. When you think of the pantheons of monsters found in folklore and legend worldwide you wonder why writer keep reusing the same old tired creatures, vampires, werewolves and zombies. If I see another teen bloodsucker I’ll scream and not in a good way. In fact I’ll do it for you now AAAAAAAAAAGH!
The Troll Hunter is the breath of fresh air I have been waiting for. And there could be no better proof that Hollywood is dead and stagnating and the future of film is world cinema.
The cast are largely unknown and the film takes the form of a documentary. The premise is that a group of film makers are investigating an alleged bear poacher in the mountains of Norway. They follow the man far into the north, despite rebuffs from him. At the scene of the shooting of supposed rouge, legitimate bear hunters claim that the tracks leading to the carcass are not those of a bear. This is swiftly dismissed by a government wildlife biologist.
The poacher is found to live in a caravan that seems to be permanently lit by sun-beds and has a weird smell to it.
Following the supposed poacher into a remote forest they are attacked by huge troll that the ‘poacher’ destroys with a UV lamp that simulates sunlight. The man is, in reality a troll hunter, secretly employed to control problem trolls when they leave their territories and approach human habitation. Pissed off with poor pay and no overtime the hunter decides to let the crew film him at work in the hope that when the secret is out his working conditions will be improved.
The trolls, of which there are several species, are wandering down from the north in unprecedented numbers and together they investigate why. There are memorable scenes such as a troll being lured out from beneath a bridge for a blood sample with three goats as bait, the team being trapped in a cave by a family of flatulent ten foot trolls and a vet explaining the science of troll turning to stone in sunlight! The beasts themselves are obviously based on the wonderfully creepy illustrations of Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen (1857-1914).
In the far reaches of the northern tundra they find that a huge section the power cables that generate an energy field that keeps the trolls contained has been torn down. The team have a spectacular showdown with a Godzilla sized troll in the Arctic wastes in the films finale.
The Troll Hunter is one of the most original, darkly comic and wildly entertaining films since Q The Winged Serpent. I can only hope that it gets a cinema release in the UK and is not relegated to bottom shelf of Blockbuster simply because it is subtitled and has no overpaid, talentless Hollywood ‘actors’ in the cast.
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