Trollhunter (2010)

Fans and possibly even sworn enemies of found-footage pictures should not miss the mockumentary Trollhunter. It has a friendly sense of humor about what it’s doing, some pretty good special effects, and a minimum of shaky camera, though it’s there. It’s a Norwegian movie, set in the far northlands, where three college students have traveled for a story about bear poaching in the region. It’s going on, and suspicions have fixed on a strange man with no bear hunting license and no obvious reason to be there—Hans. Our intrepid documentary crew tracks Hans down, but he won’t talk to them, so they begin following him everywhere he goes. Come to find out, Hans is a “trolljegern,” a government agent responsible for controlling the troll population in a secret program. Hans is willing to blow the cover of the program because he is a disgruntled worker: “I'm tired of this shitty job. I have no rights whatsoever. I get no night bonus. No overtime. No nuisance compensation. Maybe it's time for a change in troll management.” The picture has a lot of fun with the legends of trolls from fairy tales, for example using billy goats as bait to lure one out from under a bridge. Hans scoffs at many of the filmmakers’ questions, but on the other hand he insists on knowing if any of them is a Christian, as trolls are specifically attracted to the blood of a Christian man (I don’t know my troll fairy tales that well, but it rang a bell, and so did the goats). The trolls in this movie are rogue beasts approximately as big as Godzilla or King Kong, rendered in stop-motion—this is where the special effects come in, and they do the job. Things to know: Trolls grow extra heads as they age. They aren’t really heads, more like appendages. They love to gnaw on old car tires. Daylight turns them to stone, or makes them explode if they are younger (Hans says trolls live to be 1,000 to 1,200 years old)—these occurrences come with a scientific explanation by someone in a lab coat. Hans or the Norwegian government agency has rigged up a way to hit them with powerful light. The machine, mounted on a jeep-like vehicle, uses a lot of power and it doesn’t always work, but when it does that’s it for the troll. Trollhunter is full of the details of its concept, and the found-footage enables it to proceed past gaps and keep the action moving. It also has one of those abrupt endings with title cards explaining that no one in the footage was ever found, etc. I’ve had a lot of fun with this one.