Film reviews: Troll (2022) and Trollhunter (2010)

 

One of these is suddenly enormously popular on Netflix, while the other is a film that we've seen before and we re-watched to see if our memory of it being much better than the popular one was correct (it was).

Anyway, we watched Troll first.  That one, as the name implies, features just one troll, but to make up for it, it's massive.  Basically this is a Nordic Godzilla movie.  

The main protagonist is the woman in the center of the picture who is a paleontologist (she's interrupted in the middle of an important fossil find when the government send a helicopter to get her after a bizarre incident in a tunnel-blasting event) whom we first see as a child being told about troll lore while climbing in the mountains by her father (her mother is already dead, of course) who seems to believe this stuff.  20 years later, when the film takes place, they are estranged, but of course she has to bring him in, despite the fact that in the intervening years his troll obsessions have got him committed and now he's basically a hermit living in a hut in the middle of nowhere.  

(Both of these movies could have been - and may have been - sponsored by the Norwegian tourist board because of the breathtaking shots of scenery each features.)  Anyhoo, some nasty road-builder types practically taunt the environmentalist protesters as they explode a big hole in the side of a mountain, but when they go in to look at what they've done something essentially collapses the tunnel on their heads.  Then later there are what look like giant footprints leading away from the scene.  (In general, this film strains credulity by having a Godzilla-sized creature roaming around without anybody noticing, at least for the first part of the film.)  This one features a high-tech warroom featuring the government (female prime minister, naturally) discussing what to do about this, and it is to that that our heroine is brought.  The prime minister seems to have two advisers - the Pakistani-looking one seen on the left of the poster, who is a good guy, a fan of Star Trek (we see him exchanging "live long and prosper" hand signs with a nerdy female computer expert, who is in the outer office of wherever this meeting takes place - probably under another mountain) and another who is a warmonger who keeps wanting to nuke everything (there's always one).  Anyway, there's sort of a frisson between our heroine and an apparently quite decent army guy (Kris) - you can tell he's decent because he's best buddies with another soldier who is black and Muslim and eventually, after some very small cat and very large mouse-ing the last act of the film is the giant troll heading for the royal palace in Oslo for reasons that are revealed when our heroes pay it a visit.  

In general, this is essentially about as scary as one of the goofier Godzilla movies, with only really one moment of human consumption, and then the guy deserved it because he was Christian.  It's kind of amusing how in both of these films it's assumed that obviously hardly anyone is Christian, and that Trolls have every right to hate Christians because essentially they ruined Norway for the trolls - white settlers to the troll native Americans, if you will.

That theme is used to much greater effect in the much scarier (although, we're talking more Tremors than Alien here) Trollhunter, which is, apart from possibly the special effects for the giant troll, in every way superior.  It's much better scripted, better acted (or at least, more believably so) and has non-stop tension, and more varieties of troll than you can shake a stick at.  It is also that riskiest of ventures, the "found footage" (you know, Blair Witch Project, [REC] etc.) film, complete with a faux explanation of how the footage you're about to see was delivered anonymously at the start.  We're dropped right in it without explanation as three college kids (described as "teenagers" in the ending title announcement that bookends the film but looking early 20s at least) - Thomas, who is on camera, Joanna who holds the boom mike, and Halle, whom we don't see for ages because he's the cameraman - seem to be stalking a mysterious man who is currently staying in a caravan (that reeks of some indefinable smell) at a caravan park but goes out all night in his battered Land Rover (that shows up one morning with what looks like giant claw marks in its side).  This, of course, is the mysterious Trollhunter - Hans.  

The kids try to talk to him and get the brush-off so they tail him, even going so far as to get on a car ferry with him.  Eventually they follow him out one night down a winding country road and into the woods, where they see weird lights flashing and then he comes running out of the woods yelling "TROLL!" and something large chases them and even bites Thomas.  When they get back to their car they find that it has been turned on its side, covered in slime and the tires completely removed (flashback to when they've seen Hans leave a tire under a bridge for unknown reasons).  Hans has to ferry them away in his car (after tending to Thomas's wound) and finally makes the decision to let them in on his secret (because he's tired and near retirement) - he's a government employee whose job it is to dispose of rogue trolls who stray off their territory and make a nuisance of themselves.  He's the only one, but he has many contacts, including the mysterious Finn, who is not happy about Hans fraternizing with a camera crew, and whom we've already seen talking to local reporters over the body of a dead bear that he claims is responsible for the recent deaths of some German tourists (and whom we later see buying the corpse of another bear - to his annoyance, it's a Russian one) off some cheerful Poles to plant as a scapegoat for what we know are troll attacks.  There's also a much more sympathetic female vet, who asks for a blood sample (that costs a lot in bruises for the indomitable Hans to collect) to see why so many trolls are currently acting so strangely (spoiler: they've got rabies - bad news for anyone they've bitten) and who seems genuinely to care for the taciturn Hans.  As I said, everyone in this film is great, but Hans especially.  It takes a lot to make a character like his to be completely believable but he really does it.  The "kids" are great, too, including Malica (another of Norway's large Muslim population) the replacement camera operator they have to get after something nasty happens to Halle (if I say "serves him right" you'll probably guess what made the trolls zero in on him), although she doesn't get much to do.  As I said, there's a refreshing variety of trolls, and although some of them look silly (the first of them has three heads 

and calls to mind the three-headed giant knight in Holy Grail, and all of them have fairly ridiculous snouts) you do get a palpable sense of malice and menace off them.  Unlike in Troll, although Hans regrets some of the culling he's been called on to do, these are not beings with any semblance of rational thought, they are simply a Norway-specific variety of mammal, that just happens to explode (if young) or turn to stone (if old) 

when exposed to ultra violet.  Oh, and they love to chew on tires.  And Christians.  By my count we encounter 4 different kinds of troll, ending up with the truly giant one of the poster 

as the climax of the film (just before Finn tries to chase down the increasingly feverish Thomas to get the video tape off him and the footage ends and we get an announcement that the "teenagers" have vanished and the government is shtum - well, apart from a humorous on-camera slip by the (real) prime minister (to do with the fake pylons that are actually there as an electrified fence to keep the big trolls in their territory) which makes Finn, sitting next to him, wince).

Anyway, I would recommend Troll for somebody who wants to ease a child into more horrific fare (like Gremlins) and Trollhunter for the grown ups after that child has gone to bed.