"Troll Hunter" is a sort of adorable version of "Blair Witch"

When The Blair Witch Project debuted back in 1999, its not like people suddenly thought "oh, @#$%!  Witches are real!"  But the effect of the movie on a population of people who'd grown up slinging handy cams had a pretty intense effect.  Flashforward 12 years, a flopped sequel, innumerable knock-offs (Cloverfield, etc...) and a cottage industry of "reality" shows about people hunting ghosts in modestly aged homes, and....  anyway.


Troll Hunter is Norway's answer to movies like The Blair Witch, a faux-found-footage movie about a group of students who start off looking for a bear poacher and find themselves meeting someone hunting something far, far different.  I only vaguely know about Norwegian troll lore thanks to a troll figurine (it actually looked exactly like one of these) The Old Man gave me when I was in middle school when he returned from a trip to Scandanavia and a dribs and drabs thanks to fantasy literature, etc...



I liked Troll Hunter as a sort of spunky, fun movie that never achieves the No Children under 18 limitation that the Alamo put on the movie.  Its not gory, the language isn't all that bad, and the trolls are sort of cute as they wreak havoc (and there's one callback to faerie tales that I could not believe didn't have more people laughing in my theater).

The story follows the kids as they meet an official troll hunter who works for, as near as anyone can tell, the government, but maybe not.  He works for an oddly bureaucratic agency and has become disgruntled with his pay and situation, and figures "oh, sure, why the hell not?" when the kids ask to follow along.

Aside from that - its a whole lotta troll hunting, and that's either going to be your bag or it is not.

Personally, after 1.5 hours of Green Lantern, I was ready for a movie that had smaller goals and a smaller budget, and a sense of humor that didn't feel like it had passed through a focus group for maximum hilarity, but was really pretty clever nonetheless.

I'm not sure you need to rush to the theater to see this one, but I think its on InDemand right now.  Oh, and its all Norwegian in subtitles, so...  be ready to read.