Trollhunter

While investigating a series of mysterious bear killings, three Norwegian film students meet Hans, a disgruntled ex-soldier now working as the world's only Trollhunter in this faux-documentary from director André Øvredal.

The opening titles suggest that no trace of the filmmakers has ever been found and that their footage has not been manipulated in any way.  So it seems we're in Blair Witch territory then.  Is that a good or a bad thing?  I'll let you decide, but it's worth remembering there is a history of faux-docs, mockumentaries and found-footage films going back much further than The Blair Witch Project.  What is important about The Blair Witch Project, however, is the effectiveness of it's marketing.  Many people genuinely believed that it was real.  As the bright yellow titles appear on screen at the start of Trollhunter, no-one is going to believe that what  comes next is anything other than pure fiction shot in vérité style.

Trollhunter is an enjoyable enough addition to the mockumentary canon.  Otto Jespersen performs well as Hans, the titular Trollhunter, whose gruff demeanor gradually warms once he accepts the film students as documentarians of his unique work.  The trolls are believeable, even if some of the characters' reactions to them are not, and the final confrontation with the Jotnar, the biggest troll of all, is a genuinely exciting setpiece.

The problem for me, however, is that the filmmakes don't seem able to decide whether they're doing Blair Witch or Incident At Loch Ness, Werner Herzog's brilliant mockumentary about a film crew struggling desperately to make a film about the mythical Nessie in which the inconsiderate monster refuses to show up.  There are some funny scenes in Trollhunter, such as the official from the Wildlife Board strapping on a set of bear paws to make fake tracks in the snow and Hans' battle to get a blood sample from one of the monsterous beasts.  But, unlike Herzog, Øvredal doesn't seem confident in his ability to capitalise on the absurdity of the story.  Nor does he seem confident in seeing through the conceit that this is a genuine found-footage film.  The result is something in the middle, neither a consistently funny mockumentary nor a craftily constructed faux-documentary.