10 Horror Movie Monsters Who Make You EAT Your Words

The so-called good luck trolls have done as much for Norway’s troll legend as Disney has for the Grimms’ fairytales – popularisation via sanitisation. As such, we tend to think of trolls as silly, rubbery woodland creatures in the same category as pixies or imps, and when films like Trollhunter come along, we don’t expect much.

André Øvredal’s film uses a handheld, mockumentary style to launch its creatures back into reality, following a group of students from Volda University College – Thomas, Johanna and Kalle (Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck and Tomas Alf Larsen) – as they set out to document suspected bear poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen). In the process, they discover a grand secret being kept hush-hush by the Norwegian government: trolls are real, they’re here, and troll hunters like Hans are the only thing keeping their numbers in check.

Now, hunting trolls does sound ridiculous, and there is no way a found footage film of this nature should be anything but slapstick, and yet... Trollhunter manages to combine the inherent silliness of the troll with the darker legend behind them, bringing the crew face-to-face with towering behemoths that become progressively more frightening and dangerous. It’s all somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time it puts paid to the idea that this kind of material can’t be done well.