A surpassingly silly monster movie with a side helping of satire, Trollhunter beckons mainly for its stunning Norwegian scenery and slyly effective government-bashing. Set among the country’s lush woods and snow-capped mountains, this found-footage mockumentary recounts the fate of three pinheaded college students who set out to film a story about bear poaching. What they find is a lot bigger and uglier than the average bear — and a premise that would have made a cute short film. Unfortunately, like the titular trolls, writer-director Andre Ovredal just doesn’t know when to stop.
Pounding along with the trembly-cam urgency of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, the film follows the moronic Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), his monosyllabic cameraman (Tomas Alf Larsen) and a dithery sound girl (Johanna Morck) as they investigate a series of mysterious bear deaths. Suspecting poachers, they stalk the secretive Hans (Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen), a Grizzly Adams type who drives a strangely mauled trailer equipped — for reasons not immediately apparent — with indoor tanning and roof-mounted sunlamps.
Shadowing Hans on a nighttime foray deep into the woods, the trio is spooked by ferocious growling and teasing glimpses of a scaly tail and scraggly claws. The eventual materialization of a humongous hillock of hairy wrath provokes much screaming and crashing about, a reaction that will be replayed multiple times with increasing hysteria and diminishing returns. With characters as shallow as tide pools and critters (realized from illustrations by the late Theodor Kittelsen) whose lumberings are all but obscured by murk and mayhem, the film has nowhere to go but in circles.
Genially simpleminded and more sweet than scary, Trollhunter never settles on a tone. Fairytale fantasy, supernatural comedy, serious horror? All are sampled, to the detriment of the whole.
In the movie’s sole successful conceit, Hans is unmasked as the disgruntled employee of a secret government agency dedicated to concealing the existence of marauding trolls from a suspicious public.