Review: Troll Hunter (15) ****

Hans, a bearded loner, heads out into the mountains. The others despise him because he’s a maverick – unlicensed, freelance and mysterious. But Hans is hunting something much bigger than bears… The students discover this when they sneak along, and stumble onto a story out of myth and fairytale.

A faux documentary in the style of The Blair Witch Project, Troll Hunter exchanges laughter for chills, combining the look and feel of Razorback, Dog Soldiers and Jurassic Park. This is a lovingly crafted movie about the giant things that lurk in the darkness. It could be about the Bigfoot, Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster. But it’s not. It’s about trolls.

And these trolls are big. Director André Øvredal takes his inspiration from the fairytale books of his childhood and gives his trolls a traditional look. These are giant creatures of legend, and not to be trifled with.

And therein lies the film’s charm. Hans (Otto Jesperson) is a disgruntled employee. A paid operative of the Norwegian government, like many cogs within a big wheel he feels hard done-by. So he decides to help the students by telling all. Naturally the government is swift to crank into action, but not before Hans and his hangers-on get up close and personal with some of the biggest creatures seen on screen in years.

Troll Hunter is an old-fashioned monster movie, and one that embraces everything that one expects from the genre. The trolls are enormous – straight out of a Ray Harryhausen movie – and absolutely thrilling to observe. David Attenborough would have a field day.

Øvredal manages to combine humour with thrills without ever unbalancing the story. It’s fast-paced and frenetic – there is lots of charging through wet forests with a night camera as the soundtrack rumbles with the noise of pursuing trolls – and occasionally nail-chewingly nervy.

One sequence in a troll cave with the humans racing for the sunlight is reminiscent of Hammer at its best.

On limited release