FILM

Norway 2010 103 mins Subtitles Dir: Andre Ovredal Starring: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Tomas Alf Larsen, Johanna Morck, Hans Morten Hansen

Something of a companion piece to last year's splendid Finnish Santa movie 'Rare Exports', this hugely entertaining mockumentary sees the Norwegians take a stab at reclaiming their folk mythology from creeping Disneyfication. It's also acquired a rather unwanted topicality, being a film in which a massive government conspiracy prevents ordinary folks from knowing about the Christian-hating monsters in their midst. There's even a cameo by Norway's prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, whose face few of us would have recognised until recently. But - hey - let's not get too carried away here: this is a film about a state-employed troll slayer.

Student film-makers Thomas (Tosterud), Johanna (Morck) and Kalle (Larsen) don't know that gruff and taciturn Hans (Jespersen) is a troll hunter when they start to follow him round the remote fjords. They suspect he's just a rather shifty bear poacher. But a face-to-face encounter with a giant Tosserlad - which sounds like the kind of horror one might encounter in Bristol City Centre of a Saturday night, but is actually a giant three-headed troll species - convinces them that they're onto something special. Weary Hans eventually agrees to help them, much to the displeasure of Finn Haugen (Hansen), sinister head of the government Troll Security Service, who conceals troll atrocities by stitching up innocent members of the bear community. But Hans has had enough. Fed up with the anti-social hours, lack of overtime pay and endless bureaucracy, he wants to come clean about the troll cover-up.

There would be no complaints if we never saw another 'Blair Witch'-style 'found footage' flick, but at least 'Troll Hunter' spares us much of the shakeycam running-about-in-the-woods approach so we can savour the lovely scenery and impressively rendered low-budget trolls. The deadpan comedy script works through its premise satisfyingly too, incorporating familiar elements of Scandinavian troll mythology and offering some amusing pseudoscience to explain why some explode and others are turned to stone under a flashlight assault. Nerds will enjoy the film references ('Jurassic Park', etc), but it's comedian Otto Jespersen's portrayal of Hans as a grumbling, worn-out state employee that makes 'Troll Hunter' such fun. Pleasingly, there's also no attempt to humanise his nasty, stupid, flatulent foes. "How clever do you have to be to live off rocks?" reasons Hans. (Robin Askew)  

Website www.trollhunterfilm.com/

Opens: September 9

For feature about the film, click here.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011