Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:42 — 59.2MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | RSS | More
Overview
We travel to foreign lands today and visit bridges. Why bridges? Well, we have trolls.
You see, trolls exist in some countries. In fact, they are hunted and regulated like bears in America. There are various types of trolls – that never showed up in the fairy tales.
How do we know this? Well, there is some found footage that exposes all of it. The dirty secrets that are blamed on bears. The hidden lairs of groups of trolls. And the sickness they can pass on to humans.
But don’t go looking for them because the shadowy government (M.I.B.’s?) will come for you.
Trailer
Get It
YouTube
Transcript
Stephen: [00:00:00] Alright, so we are still in episode, or season five, and we are doing Trollhunter. This is another movie that we’ve seen a previous movie by this director.
So open us up, Rhys, tell us about the movie.
Rhys: Alright, Trollhunter. This is a film by Andre Overdahl, who produced, or directed The autopsy of Jane Doe.
Stephen: Yes. And that’s both of these are very interesting movies, twists on you know, like found footage and stuff. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Overdall, he’s Norwegian he’s about our age.
He’s not super prolific. He doesn’t like have 40 movies to his, to his name or anything like that. He’s got eight and he’s got one in the can. His first film was a thriller called future murder. And it was something about being able to predict when someone is going to die or something and trying to prevent it before it happens.[00:01:00]
Kind of what is that? Minority report?
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. There was a TV show where God sent them newspapers a day early or something.
Rhys: Oh, wow. Yeah. But you know, it’s Norwegian, so I’ve never seen it. I mean, it’s not like I don’t watch foreign films, but I’ve troll hunter was his second full length film.
And then he went on to do the autopsy of Jane Doe scary stories to tell in the dark.
Stephen: Oh, wow. That he, so he’s getting more popular. Really? Because I know scary stories to tell in the dark. That’s a huge book franchise. And I know I heard a lot of people talking about that movie, wanting to go see it or seeing it.
And autopsy is Jane Doe for us. In particular, it’s like one of the most viewed episodes and videos we have next to Black Coat’s Daughter. So those two get the most hits.
Rhys: Yeah he also did The Last Voyage of Demeter.
Stephen: Well, that just came out and that was an even bigger one, actually, in the theater. And so, yeah, and
Rhys: [00:02:00] then his last one the one that’s being done up now is Gary’s story still in the dark.
Part two.
Stephen: I, I liked that. Jeff Strand title part two of the sequel.
Rhys: Yes. Yes. Well, and I think. I was watching interviews with him and he was saying that he loved doing Trollhunter. He would love to do Trollhunter 2. This was an interview right when the movie came out. But he said he really wanted his next film to be like a more Hollywood style film.
And so then he went on to do the Autopsy of Jane Doe, which was done in England. You know, it’s kind of Hollywood adjacent. And then after that, he’s just been You know, big title after big title.
Stephen: I didn’t actually realize he did the Demeter because it just came out on streaming. I missed it in the theater.
I wanted to see it. You know, and it’s probably good because a lot of people said, yeah, this is not a good, scary movie, so it’s probably a good one.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s probably actually really good. Yeah. The autopsy of Jane Doe was his first English language film. [00:03:00] And it ran an hour and 26 minutes. It premiered, its Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 and it grossed 6.1 million worldwide, but only 10,000 in the US and Canada won release.
Stephen: It was not, you know, something we never mentioned for that movie. Whoever got chosen to do wardrobe for that had a pretty easy job for the main character .
Rhys: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. It was nominated for 18 awards and it won eight. Troll Hunter runs a little longer. It was an hour and 43 minutes. It debuted in Brazil, Norway, and South Africa, all on October 29th of 2010.
Stephen: Not just in time for Halloween.
Rhys: Yep. It showed up in the U S at Sundance in 2011. Where it was pretty well received. That’s where a lot of the interviews that you find of him talking about this. That’s where a lot of them were shot at Sundance. It grossed 253, [00:04:00] 000 in the U S so it did. Orders of magnitude better than the autopsy of Jane Doe and 5.
3 million worldwide against a budget of 19 million Kroner, which is about 1. 9 million.
Stephen: Nice. Okay. And yeah, so he it’s available on Tubi, which is one of our new favorite horror destinations but also Netflix. It’s actually pretty well viewed on Netflix and I highly recommend the closed caption version with the actual Norwegian speaking people because the dubbed version sucks horribly.
Rhys: I, I saw that Tubi had both and I’ve never watched the dubbed version of this. So I
Stephen: didn’t choose it initially, but I got done and I said, okay, I want to see how good. And it was not good. It was worse than the Korean martial arts movies of the seventies. Wow. Nice. It was just so not. Yeah.
Rhys: It got nominated.
For 25 different awards and it won 12. So it actually award wise did better [00:05:00] than the autopsy of Jane Doe as well.
Stephen: Did any of the trolls get best supporting actor or anything?
Rhys: It’s funny you mentioned that the trolls are all played by one guy.
Stephen: Wow. So they weren’t just all computer generated. I thought they were, I thought it looked amazingly good, but that’s even cooler.
Actually.
Rhys: They had, he had specifically one guy do the vocal for all the trolls. So there’d be consistency. See, And they would just modulate the frequency of his voice. And then for special effects. They weren’t all computer generated. You had a guy in a troll suit, but like blown up larger
Stephen: than
Rhys: everything else, kind of green screen almost.
Stephen: Wow. Okay. That impresses me even more. I was looking at it and I was like, these look really good for a lower budget movie. But that makes sense. It’s, you know, cheaper to do that. And we’ve said it before, talk about calling all the time. Practical effects usually look better and they hold up longer.
Rhys: I was really surprised because he [00:06:00] mentioned in one of the interviews, they only had like 88 special effects scenes to shoot for this whole movie.
Stephen: Wow.
Rhys: Which I thought, well, that’s actually pretty good when you think about it, considering there’s like four encounters with trolls.
Stephen: Yeah. Yeah. Some, yeah. And chasing through the woods and in the cave and yeah, that’s cool.
Rhys: Apparently at release, they were super cagey about who was in it and they were trying to do the whole Blair Witch style kind of marketing campaign.
The cast was made up of mostly unknown actors. But there are four famous Norwegians in the cast who were comedians. The guy who plays Hans, the troll hunter, Otto yes. Person is a famous comedian.
Stephen: Familiar to me. I might’ve seen him in some clip somewhere.
Rhys: Newt Narum is the guy at the power plant who seems completely clueless about why the power just goes around in a big circle.
He is a comedian. Robert, Robert Robert Stolenberg is the Polish bear supplier. And [00:07:00] Hans Morten Hansen is Finn, the boss. They’re like standup comedians. They’re like sitcom guys. Interesting. Yeah.
Stephen: So, so just popped into my head. Have you ever seen the the movie that’s the quote unquote, like behind the scenes about Edwards plan nine it’s, you know, the making of, and then there’s another movie shadow of the vampire, that’s the, the behind the scenes, real story of Nosferatu.
So those Movies that are fake fiction, but made to look like they’re the behind the scenes. That’s what we need for these found footage like this one, these kids disappear. So they do a, a second movie where it’s investigating their disappearance and it’s a totally different style of movie, but you know, it’d be a cool little sequel to some of these found footage.
Well, that’s what they did with Blair
Rhys: Witch. Yeah. Blair Witch 2 is like, my sister went missing in the woods, now I’m going to go retrace her steps.
Stephen: Okay, well, let me just say, they need to do one of those better.
Rhys: Do a good one.
Stephen: [00:08:00] Yeah, right. And this would, this I think would work well, because it, Was so interesting to me that it’s found footage, but it’s trolls.
And it’s from a country that you can envision having trolls. And, you know, it was a great choice. I was, this is like, if we weren’t doing it on the podcast, it’s been on my list. You know, it’s been one of those things. I’m like, that’s a movie I need to see.
Rhys: Yeah. We’ll talk about trolls a little bit. There are traditional Norwegian folklore creatures, not unlike if you’re going to England and talk about fairies, trolls are a thing for Norwegians.
And the tropes that they use in the film, like hating Christian blood and being turned to stone in the sunlight having a tail or multiple heads, those are all like legitimate, traditional troll stories. There’s different kinds of trolls. Like you have forest trolls and mountain trolls, which they address Yeah.
In this show. And very well done too. Yeah. Yeah. And the concept of trolls predates Scandinavian folklore. It goes way back to the [00:09:00] old Nordic mythology, but they weren’t called trolls then. Troll is an A name that came around. It was kind of a mix between old Norse and middle high German troll meant fiend.
Almost like devil, like,
Stephen: and then Tolkien used it. And now we all know about them, the Billy goats and stuff.
Rhys: Well, and so he, he did a lot of that stuff in there. They live in isolated areas. They’re rarely ever helpful or friendly. They’re seen as isolationists or other times they’ll live in groups.
There are even stories that depict them basically as man sized non Christian anti social loners who just live in woods and caves. So the majority of troll information that we have was gathered by two folklorists in the 19th century. Peter Christian as, as Jorgen and Jorgen Mo, they were inspired by the brothers Grimm in [00:10:00] Germany, and they traveled around Norway in the 19th century and just collected these folk tales, put them all on a book with some nice illustrations, and that’s how we have as much information as we do about.
What people thought about trolls back then.
Stephen: Like that really popular, famous gnome book.
Rhys: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of the stuff that they reference in the movie is stuff that’s directly out of there. Like there’s something about an eating contest. You know, and Hans gets upset by that. Well, that’s actually something from the story.
There’s the goats on top of the bridge in reference to the three Billy Goat Crufts. So
Stephen: I also took the eating story to be a slight nod to Tolkien very popular scene, but it fits right
Rhys: with
Stephen: the mythology.
Rhys: It does. Yeah. In interviews, Overdall would call this a comedic road horror movie. And I just kept thinking as I was watching it, like for the third time, I’m like, Steve was saying during Baskin about, Hey, we’re going to watch a movie from a foreign country, but you never get to see much of the foreign country.
You get [00:11:00] to see lots of rural Norway here. It’s
Stephen: pretty awesome scenery. It’s a great, you know, thing if you like that type of stuff. Overall, I loved how they treated everything in the movie. They treated a troll security service that’s secret underground, very X Files like, you know. I’m like, man, I’d love to see Malder investigating trolls in the movie.
Norway, you know, and the scenery and making it all real, they tie in with the bear hunters and how they control it. So it’s like a real service, but it’s just secret. And, you know, he did a really good job. And like you said, all the mythology that comes out in just little snippets without beating you over the head with it.
Rhys: Yeah. It’s really funny because he made it specifically for Norwegian audience. So when it did so well at Sundance, he was just. Rilled in an effort to get the actors to make the lines seem more realistic. They improvised almost all their lines. He had a rule. It was something like, [00:12:00] we’ll take a look at the script and you’re allowed to say anything you want, as long as it’s not in the script.
So they’d look at the script to give them the feel for the scene and then put the script down and improvise everything from there on out.
Stephen: That that’s probably what gave it some of its interesting feel. I’m sure.
Rhys: Yeah. Okay. He doesn’t consider himself a good screenwriter, which is why he was like, you know, we’ll do that.
Yeah. I came up with lines, but they’re not good. So it
Stephen: would have been nice like 10, 20 years ago, if he would have talked to George Lucas and said, yo buddy you know, just say it, get some help.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The film was shot in 29 days and it covered like all of Norway. It was everywhere. He doesn’t call it found footage.
He calls it a documentary, which is that whole thing that I was talking about with Europa report where, you know, And again, I mentioned this in Autopsy of Jane Doe in his interviews, he’s just so humble and he passes the praise to his [00:13:00] cast and his crew. He absolutely just like, was so thrilled to be there, to be talking about this and the fact that people were interested.
He was happy that the American audience got about 89 percent of the jokes in it, but there are others that were just so Norwegian that, Nobody was going to get them.
Stephen: Oh, see, now I’m about to go find that list online somewhere and go just to understand the country a
Rhys: little. Well, I guess it’s, it’s such subtle things, like not what the guy says.
It’s the manner with which he says it, like the inflection in his voice, which makes it funny in Norwegian that we would never, ever get,
Stephen: it’d be like doing a, a movie with Eskimos and they use a different word for snow. That’s very funny to them. . But
Rhys: we’re like,
Stephen: okay.
Rhys: Yeah. There are two of the actors have been in other movies I’ve seen, there was a series called freaked Vet, which is basically a slasher film.
There were two of them in English. [00:14:00] It’s cold prey and cold prey to Johan. Yeah. Cold prey to Johanna Moick who plays Johanna. She was in the second one. And then the guy who plays Thomas the guy who plays Callie Thomas Alf Larson has been in 13 titles, including cold prey, the first one and cold prey too, was the second.
So he was in both of those, but other than that, you’re not going to know anything that anybody else has been in. You have the title card and it starts saying October 13th, 2008.
Stephen: This is the time for everybody to pause, go watch the movie, get your drink and then we’ll continue.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. There you go.
Just a friendly reminder of how to watch this podcast.
Stephen: Yes. Yes. We’re interactive.
Rhys: Yes.
Stephen: Besides throwing rotten fruit at us, you know, there’s other interactivity.
Rhys: Yeah. It mentions film camera team. A S apparently these. Hard drives with footage showed up and this film is the unedited [00:15:00] compilation of all those films.
Film Camerataen AS is a Norwegian production company. You can look them up. It’s, it almost seems artsy like the kind of films that they do and they’re recognized worldwide for, you know, it’s kind of like the A24 of Norway. From what I’ve got, the feel I got from it. And
Stephen: it fits right in with a lot of the best found footage is trying to use real world people in companies and situations.
You know, if you get the permissions, I’m sure.
Rhys: Yeah. I think that’s probably the big difference between like a Norwegian found footage, horror film. And in the Americas, you’re not going to get somebody who’s like a 24, got this collection of, you know, a 24 is fine to put their name on it, but don’t put them in the film, kind of thing.
Yeah. They tried to verify it and they say it must be true. Dun, dun, dun. I it was actually surprising how many people do write, like, is this real? You know, he was surprised at how many people were curious about whether or [00:16:00] not this was an actual thing or not.
Stephen: Yeah, you know, we see all the posts for stuff and, you know, we try and look this stuff up.
So, you know, somebody like my mother, if it just showed up, if we just started watching it, she’s like, is this, I could see her, you know, feeling, is this really real?
Rhys: Yeah, it has a real authentic feel to it. So it does.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: It’s I, I, I, I, I mentioned that I said, okay, it starts off like. Every found footage movie, a bunch of kids with a camera investigating something.
But as it went on, it definitely had a real solid field to it. It didn’t feel, I didn’t feel like, Oh my God, please just move on. You know, not at all. There are definitely better and worse found footage movies.
Rhys: Yeah. And the characters are also distinct in their personalities. Yeah. Like you have Johanna she’s the one who does the sound.
She’s the one who’s carrying the boom. She you know, she’s kind of timid at first, but then after bad things happen to Ella, she’s angry. She’s like mad [00:17:00] about everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And
Rhys: you Thomas, who’s like the front man for the whole thing. He’s all about poking the bear. Like he’ll be there with a bunch of other reporters in like the, The Norwegian official.
And he’s like trying to get the reporters to ask more questions, right? Get this guy. So,
Stephen: and I also noticed. Even though it’s found footage, there’s a definite like arc to the story. It’s not just a bunch of clips put together. That’s the, that’s what makes good and bad found footage is when you just have all these clips put together, but there’s not much of a story or a buildup.
It doesn’t feel as good, but this one is found footage. It feels like they just put the clips together, but it also feels like the story is progressing and leading somewhere, even though it’s not a standard story. You might say, yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. So when, when we’re sitting here talking about it, I took a decent amount of notes and, you know, it’ll take us a while to get through it, but if you were to sit there and do that with Blair witch, it’s like, They show up, they get lost, they find a [00:18:00] house, they die.
I mean, that that’s kind of like the whole thing in a nutshell. You can sit there and, Oh, this time she gets really close to the camera and says she’s scared. And this time she’s far away.
Stephen: And that’s why Blair witch was great in 99 when nobody had seen it, knew about it and you’re in the theater and it’s like engrossing because it was the first big one like that.
But since then, everybody’s tried to copy it, but it’s like, eh, we’ve seen it. This one feels like a movie story with still found.
Rhys: They have the radio on in their car, you know, a nod to mama where they’re using. Actually, I think this predates mama, but where they’re using the radio to give us some discourse about what’s going on.
There’s bears around hunting in the farmland and there’s a hunting party. They actually come up and start interviewing the hunters, the hunters bears are protected in Norway by federal law. And so you have to actually be a bear hunter to hunt them down. And these guys are like, you kind of get the impression that they think they’re super hot shit.
[00:19:00] Just the way they talk, the bear doesn’t, I’m sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say the bear doesn’t scare them. It’s the poacher. There’s a poacher that scares them.
Stephen: Right. And I love how they use the radio and talk about they’re explaining these weird incidences with bears. If you’re in the cryptic community with Bigfoot or Mothman or any of that stuff, you know, that’s the thing all the time.
And yes, most of the time it is true, but that’s what makes this as funny. So funny is you hear it, but you’re seeing it from the other side. It’s like, yeah, they’re just making that up, blaming it on the poor bear. Yeah. And then you see him with the footprints and stuff later. Yeah.
Rhys: The funny thing is the poacher isn’t afraid of being seen.
They’ve all seen him in his Land Rover. None of them have said anything to him. You know, they’ll sit here and talk about. He better not be doing this. And well, you’ve seen his car, you’ve seen him driving away from this scene. So we get a nice trip through the countryside as you’re driving around trying to hunt down this poacher [00:20:00] and Thomas.
I mean, he’s the front man. He’s the reporter, reporter of this little trio.
Stephen: And they’re college kids. So this is like class assignment thing.
Rhys: Yeah. He is played by Glenn Erland Toster and he’s got three films under his belt. He’s doing this whole remote. Thing, which I thought was hilarious. He’s doing this whole remote thing where he’s holding the mic and you can see from the angle that you can see Johanna and Keller in the glass reflected behind him we find out that they’re in Volta, which if you look it up, Volta is on the West coast in the Southern part of Norway.
And it’s not like it becomes super important, but. I’m a big map guy. And so every time they mentioned something, I would look and you could kind of trace their trail where they were going as they went up the coast and then inland and then up into the mountains.
Stephen: Okay. There’s our shirt idea for this movie.
We get a map and we trace their path.
Rhys: Yeah. And then a big question mark where they [00:21:00] disappeared.
Stephen: Yes. Troll troll locations, but like push pins in it.
Rhys: And it’s. It’s super authentic for, if you had like three friends who were doing this, cause like there’s this one scene where Thomas is just peeing on the side of the road and Kelly’s recording him.
And that’s me up too. Cause that’s
Stephen: very college student.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah.
Stephen: Heck I’d probably do it now.
Rhys: That’s when they find out where the hunter is staying that the poacher. And we actually get to see Cali for a second. Cause he’s polishing his lens. A good way to actually get the actor’s face in there.
So they find this guy’s camper. It’s covered in smelly weeds. What did they think it was? They thought it was some kind of herb, like basil or something like that. And it’s surrounded by these really high powered bright lights, but he’s not home. And the guy who owns the camping place is like, Yeah, he goes out at night and doesn’t return until dawn.
So they sit around and wait till he shows up and then Thomas, which is just very [00:22:00] apropos for the character, just walks right up and he asks a question. He’s like, Hey, you know, are you this poacher? And he’s just like, get lost. And then he goes in the camper and closes the door and they look at his truck and it is jacked up.
There are claw marks all over it, holes in the metal, I mean, not like holes, like rust holes. These are like
Stephen: three slash marks.
Rhys: Yeah. Something has done some damage.
Stephen: This whole scene is very well done with how you would do footage and how, you know, that you can see them editing it later. To make a documentary for their school project, but, you know, this is supposedly raw footage and, you know, it’s just the way they’re acting and talking.
And I thought that was all really well done for this.
Rhys: Yeah, the very next scene, it’s night and Johanna puts a bug on his camper so they can hear him. And like, that was just so perfect. She’s like creeping up. Then she gets it under the wheel. Well, then runs back. Yeah. Like, that’s exactly what that would look like, [00:23:00] actually.
Yeah. They can hear him on the phone, and he says he’s on his way out, and he expects to find it that night, whatever it is. And he drives off, and they try to follow him at a distance, but they lose him immediately. Like, just gone. So they go back to his camper, and Callit turns on the infrared and looks through the window, and he can see that there’s a shotgun in there, and there’s some very large, furry things hanging from the ceiling, but they don’t know what those are.
The next day, find out a bear has been reported shot. Thomas is wondering out loud if the troll hunter might’ve been the shooter, the bear hunters point out that the bear population is controlled by the state. None of them did it. This is a serious offense. And then one of them’s looking at the tracks and he’s like, this looks kind of fishy, almost like the bear was shot somewhere else and drug here.
So Thomas and crew challenged Finn, who is the representative from the government. About whether or not it was a bear. And he says, [00:24:00] of course it was. And all those hunters, they’re just idiots. Those bear hunters, they’re idiots. Don’t listen to them. So everyone goes back to the campsite and Thomas gets ready to follow Hans.
Because Hans has pulled up stakes and he’s taking the camper out. So they follow him and they go along and they get on a ferry. He gets on a ferry. They get on a ferry.
Stephen: Yeah. I’m thinking, man, that ferry with a big truck and a camper being pulled by it. I’m like, people are probably bitching. It’s like, ah, now I got
Rhys: to
Stephen: wait.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. After he leaves the ferry, they’re driving along. They see him stopped by a bridge and they videotape him. He’s. Getting out of his truck and he has an old tire and he tosses it under the bridge and then gets back in and drives on. They’re like, what the heck? So a
Stephen: question, do you think the ferry went over a Fjord?
Rhys: I’m sure.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: they they take two ferries in this. And if you look at the map of where they’re at, it’s literally the only intelligent way to get from point A to point B, unless [00:25:00] you’re going to go way out of your way to go around. So. They arrive in song of Fjordane, which is a little further up the coast and they get onto another ferry.
And while they’re on the ferry this time, Thomas goes up top deck and decides he’s just going to try and subtly talk to Hans. And then when, as soon as he does, Hans sees the camera and he’s like, you’re following me. Then he’s like, leave me the hell alone. And then he leaves. So off the ferry, they continue to follow him and he pulls into some A rural campground.
And then he leaves and when they, when he does, they get in their car. It almost looks like a Gremlin, but I can’t imagine that’s what it is, but it’s something about that size if you’re and they start following him, which I guess Gremlin would be appropriate
Stephen: for a movie about trolls.
Rhys: That’s true.
That’s true. I just don’t think it was in Europe at the time, but they find a gate that’s closed with a sign saying blasting area, keep away. And so they open the gate and just continue down this road. It’s really just a [00:26:00] dirt track. Cal is nervous about being out there, but they keep going deeper into the woods and then they find his truck parked there.
There’s this kind of a trail, they start to follow it. Johanna is hearing odd noises on the, on the boom through the sound. There’s some flashing lights in the distance and now everyone hears the sounds and there’s like growling and stuff and Hans comes running out of the woods. Looks directly into the camera and yells troll and everyone starts running.
Stephen: You
Rhys: got to
Stephen: have that running scene with found footage.
Rhys: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just to make somebody with motion sickness a little queasy.
Stephen: Yeah.
Rhys: Thomas is screaming in the dark but everyone makes it back to the truck. Hans is out there. And Thomas is like something bit me. And Hans helps patch him up while they’re at the truck.
He gives him a tetanus shot. He has gauze and some duct tape which kind of puts these three weird stripes on Thomas’s coat that you’ll see through the rest of the movie. [00:27:00]
Stephen: Yeah, very subtle, like, just like the truck. But you gotta wonder, so is he bitten by a radioactive troll? Is he gonna become Trollman?
Rhys: Trollman, kind of. He, Hans tells him it wasn’t very smart for them to follow him and we see why their car is just totaled. It’s on its side, beat to hell, the tires are gone and the rims are all slimy.
Stephen: Oh,
Rhys: yeah,
Stephen: there’s some weird slime on there. Let’s touch it.
Rhys: Yeah, yeah,
Stephen: yeah.
Rhys: And tell us being a bit of a dick about the fact that Hans yelled troll.
He’s like, do you believe in trolls? And he doesn’t say that he doesn’t. Thomas continues to grill him on the way back. I don’t know. I was just like, well, you guys should be happy that he’s giving you a ride. But okay. You know, he’s very dedicated. He is. Thomas keeps saying, I’d love to film what you do.
And Han says, I will let you film me killing what bit you if you will do [00:28:00] exactly what I tell you to. And Han’s like, you got it. Absolutely. So, they go back to the campgrounds, they’re staying in a cabin, Thomas is admiring his wound, you know, looking at it Johanna wants to call her parents and tell them where they are, where they are, and that evening, they go back and Hans pulls up that night and asks if they’re Christian, and they all say they’re not.
Kella Kella says, is it because they can smell the blood of a Christian man? He’s kind of joking when he says it, but it’s ironic that he’s the one who brings that up being funny.
Stephen: Yeah,
Rhys: they head back to the same place where they were and Hans has Thomas put the sign up about blasting Kel is worried because there’s a landmine inside the truck.
He’s like, is this a landmine and Hans is like, yeah, but it’s not armed What’s your problem? So they get out of the truck and the first thing he says you have to do is go down to the [00:29:00] creek take Off your clothes and wash yourselves off Especially your pits in your groin. And Johanna’s like, I don’t think so.
But they agreed they’d do whatever he said. Then they have to cover themselves with this nasty, kind of, slimy troll stench.
Stephen: Troll stench, troll,
Rhys: troll
Stephen: stank, yeah. You know, rub this on ya. And, and you gotta wonder then, how bad does his camper really smell?
Rhys: Oh yeah, yeah for sure. And then, And, you know, Kela and Johan are like, we’re not doing this, but Thomas is all in and Hans is like, you said you’d do it, and so do it or get out of here.
So everyone does it, they’re all given flashlights and they head into the woods. Hans is what he’s called. Carrying what he calls a big flashbulb, but it looks like a gun with a boxy end kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Rhys: He says the, the gun shines UVB rays, which turns them to stone or causes them to explode. And Johanna is kind of [00:30:00] teasing Thomas about it.
You can tell she and Kella don’t believe any of this. They just think they’re following some kook into the woods. Then Kella makes the joke about the pie eating contest, which again, is a specific Norwegian folktale. And Hans, you know, is like fairy tales don’t hold case here. And then you have, what’s called a Ringelfish.
This troll comes out of nowhere and it’s bigger than what Hans expected. And so he’s like, run. And so everybody runs.
Stephen: And it’s our first intro and they do really well with introducing it. It’s off in the distance, trees are shaking and all of that. So I like how they did build
Rhys: up. Yeah. Yeah. It’s got three heads.
And it’s just, you know, it comes after them. They run through the trees. They get back to the vehicle.
Stephen: And where did college students get night vision goggles and be able to capture it through [00:31:00] the camera?
Rhys: Well, I imagine that’s just the night vision on the camera. They weren’t wearing goggles. That’s true.
Yeah. They get back to the car and the Ringle Finch is not around. So Hans makes a phone call and whoever he’s on the phone with wants a blood sample. And he’s like, well, I’m not set for that. Everybody’s just kind of waiting and Hans is like, I’m going to go flush it out. So now you have the film crew sitting there and they’re like, trying to think about, is this a prank?
Is this like some sort of crazy elaborate thing? And then. Hans puts his camera down and not Hans, Kella puts his camera down while he’s doing something. And you can see that the camera picks up the lights flashing in the distance. They don’t see that,
Stephen: right?
Rhys: Then there’s some vibrations and some noises and, oh, you know what?
They didn’t see the Ringo Finch. [00:32:00] That’s what he said they were after. So. They hear the vibration and the weeds and the trees. And then here comes the thing. It’s a tosser lad, not a wrinkle Finch. Hans is running. He tells them to run. It’s three heads. It’s like 40 feet tall. They’re running through the woods, Kela falls, and he gets separated from the rest of the group and he grabs his camera.
He’s a bit lost now. And that night vision comes in super handy. And you can watch the troll moving through the woods and Kelly like follows it in parallel, which isn’t a bad idea. I would have like hung back a little bit, but you know, that’s just me.
Stephen: Well, you know, I might have, if it was 50 foot, but 40 foot.
Yeah. You know, I wouldn’t worry.
Rhys: No big deal. Yeah. He sees Thomas in the woods. The two of them pair up and then Hans finds them. He points to where the troll is. They were standing next to it the whole time. It looked like a tree branch, a tree. It was just its leg. They get back to the truck. Hans [00:33:00] tells them to get behind his car.
Thomas takes the camera now and Hans starts to sing a hymn because trolls really apparently hate Christianity. They hate the smell of Christian blood. They hate the sound of church bells and they hate hymns. And that calls the creature out and he hits this huge rack of lights on the roof of his car, which turns the thing to stone.
Stephen: And I like the scientific explanation that’s not super detailed to explain why it turns him to stone.
Rhys: Yeah, yeah. Johanna got separated from everyone else. She comes out after the whole thing happens. She’s super excited to find that, oh my gosh, these things are a real thing. Hans says that he knows one of the beliefs in God, because you must, it smelled it, they all deny it they ask who he works for and they’re like, is it the government?
And he won’t deny it, so they’re like, oh, it must be the government. Johanna asks him why he’s telling them all this now, and he says, it’s a crappy job, I have to work nights, there’s no combat pay and maybe it’s time for a change in troll management. And he says, it’s a crappy job, I have to work nights, [00:34:00] there’s no combat pay and maybe it’s time for a change in troll management.
And then he takes a sledgehammer and a jackhammer and proceeds to break up the giant pile of stone.
Stephen: And that’s, I love that because now the rest of the movie, while they’re driving around, they start looking at piles of stones and stuff. It’s like, is that what, what’s that? You know? Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. Finn shows up and he’s not happy that there’s cameras there and you have Polish bear delivery come and bring them a bear.
It’s it’s funny because. And if you’re Norwegian and watching this and this isn’t true, you can feel free to comment below and let us know it’s not true, but I came across a thing saying that in Norway holes are seen like in the United States, people make judgments about Mexicans that You know, it’s not true, but like the Polish people in Norway are there and they’ll do any job at [00:35:00] all and they don’t, they don’t even try to learn Norwegian.
They’ll speak English instead of Norway. And that’s like the only English scene in the whole movie is when the polls show up. So the whole thing is done as kind of a, almost racist tongue in cheek. Poking fun of the Poles who happen to be living in Norway,
Stephen: and there’s actually a second layer to that, too, because they’re getting the bear to blame the dead bear and throw people off the track.
But he says this isn’t the right type of areas like no one will notice. And that’s so true in our country, too. You know, it’s like, wait a minute. That doesn’t even make sense. But you have most. Majority of people going, Oh, okay. So it’s a bear you know, but wait a minute. That bear doesn’t even live here.
Where did it come from? That, you know, so I love that it’s multi layered there. I didn’t even realize the other part.
Rhys: Yeah. And then he rips them off by only paying them half because bad bear, bad pay.
Stephen: That’s another shirt idea right there.
Rhys: Yeah. What a
Stephen: dead bear that’s tongue out on the [00:36:00] shirt.
Rhys: The Ringelfinch is still out there somewhere.
And in fact, a few Germans have gone missing. Finn tells them he’s going to take their cameras, but he doesn’t not in this scene at any rate. So they’re interviewing him now and he says, this is not Finn. They’re interviewing Hans. He’s like, this is a special situation. There’s way too many trolls out and about something’s going on.
And Thomas is like, you’re a hero and nobody knows it. And he’s like, I’m not a hero. It’s dirty work. So then they go out for breakfast and they’re sitting there eating and they’re, they’re asking him the questions. Thomas really doesn’t feel too well, which is a little foreshadowing for what it comes to in the end.
But radioactive troll man,
Stephen: shooting troll slime out of his butt. Wow. Well, isn’t that what Spider Man should have done?
Rhys: There’s a whole discussion on trolls. The heads, they have three of them. Now they’re vestigial. They only have one. The other two do nothing. They just. Grow as they age. It’s a display [00:37:00] function to scare other trolls and to turn on female trolls.
Stephen: that was pretty good.
Rhys: Yeah. There’s two different control main groups. There’s Woodland trolls, which are Scoog Troll and mountain trolls, which are Bear Troll. And there’s Subspecies Tuss lads, wr Ringo fans, dove do bin and Yanar, and I think we get to see all four of those in this. He works for the TSS, the troll security service.
There’s so much paperwork he has to fill out Every time he kills a troll, he is gotta fill out this paperwork.
Stephen: I, I definitely would wanna get a troll security service shirt or poster or something. I, I, that just tickled me to death on this movie.
Rhys: Yeah. Trolls are predators. They’ll eat anything. They can, they’ll even eat rocks.
They can live for a thousand to 1200 years. They’re not very smart. Hans was a Navy ranger. And that’s kind of how he got the gig [00:38:00] and we get to see the inside of his trailer. He has troll tails hanging from his ceiling. So it smells like troll inside. That way he smells more like trolls.
Stephen: And this is why he doesn’t date.
Rhys: Yes. Well, he kind of does. We find out. Yeah. There’s a little, little thing there. They’re off to get the Rango Finch. The radio is talking about the Germans who were killed by the bear and we get to see how he hunts them in the next section. There’s a scene where Thomas is there and he stops and poses.
He’s like, is this like from the famous painting? That painting was by Theodore Kittleson. And it’s something about a castle or something like that. But. That’s what they were specifically referencing. He’s got this huge trap. They bait it with concrete and charcoal. Apparently smaller trolls would come and eat in the bait.
So he had to rebate the trap.
Stephen: Yeah. I love how they’re basically hunting mice, just 40 foot tall.
Rhys: Yes. 40 foot [00:39:00] tall mice with multiple heads. They stopped at the next campground and they’re in their cabin. And Kela informs Thomas that he thinks he’s found tracks. So off they go, they come across the site where Finn is.
And he’s explaining away these strange tracks that he claims are from a Russian bear that walks all the way through Finland and Sweden. And this is where they’re like poking, poking fun at them. They’re like poking the bear. Yeah. Isn’t it strange for a bear to store food under a bridge? And Finn looks a little nervous.
He’s like not for Russian bears. And then Thomas is like, these tracks look wrong. Like, is it rock and cross legged? So they’re really like, especially because he knows them. They’re really kind of giving it to him.
Stephen: Yeah. You gotta love the, that official in this movie because You know, come on, you’re in charge of a secret government agency that you’re trying to fool everybody in the thinking this, [00:40:00] that, you know, it just falls into all those conspiracy theories and all that, but like in the very extreme way, you know, it’s trolls.
It’s not just who shot J, J, JFK or, you know, other government conspiracies. It’s troll hunting, you know, what a job. Vaguely
Rhys: reminds me of cabin in the woods that way, where there’s this organization that’s You know, keeping the dark forces at bay. Yeah.
Stephen: By the way, that was written. The book was written by Paul Tremblay.
I’m going to meet him in a couple of weeks. I’m going to ask him if he wanted to get on to talk about novelization and what they did with the movie, because he wrote the book first, I believe. Sure.
Rhys: Yeah, that sounds cool. They find the place where the troll is not on some park. Han says it’ll be back that night and they’ll take a blood sample and then he’ll kill it.
That night he’s He’s got this bridge and he’s baiting it with a live goat. Kela’s nervous, so he’s keeping the camera far away and zooming in, and Thomas is like, no, we gotta get closer. He’s like, no, the zoom’s fine. But he [00:41:00] keeps insisting they get closer and closer until they’re up on top of the bridge, or just off to the side of it.
And this giant hand reaches out from under the bridge and pulls a goat down. Kela switches to night vision. You can see this giant thing try and take a bite out of the goat, and then he slams it into a rock and then continues to eat it. And then Hans comes out looking like Iron Man in the first movie, he’s wearing this iron suit.
Stephen: Combination between Iron Man and the Monty Python Black Knight.
Rhys: Yeah, yeah he’s carrying a bucket of Christian’s blood, I don’t know where one goes to get that. It’s on eBay probably. Yeah, and he’s got this giant syringe to get the blood sample. You’re like, does he really need that armor? He goes out there and he starts to ring this bell and we find out that he does need that armor because the troll comes out from under the bridge and it starts to mess with the blood that he spilled on the bridge.
He tries to take the blood sample and it just wails on him. Like hits him once and he’s down [00:42:00] trouble. Yeah. It tries to bite him, but the armory keeps his teeth from penetrating and he’s just limp. He’s a rag doll. The troll goes back into the bridge and the crew goes out to see if he’s okay. And he’s still kind of unconscious.
But Thomas and Johanna help him up. And he gets up and he asks for the syringe and heads down under the bridge to confront the troll and you can see the flash going off and an explosion as the troll explodes into a bloody pile of chunks, but he got his sample.
Stephen: Yeah, well, you can just get some of the samples off the camera because
Rhys: yeah, so they’re off to see the veterinarian who’s the one who asked for the blood sample.
She seems a little surprised that he’s got a film crew with him and he’s like, yeah, don’t worry about it. It’s, it’s on me. It’s all on me. And then she’s like, there’s a shower if you guys want to clean up. And this is where you get the science end of it. Trolls can’t process vitamin D properly from sunlight turn into calcium.
So if you hit them with UV lights, their bodies [00:43:00] overreact and their stomach expands and gases are formed in the intestines. And veins and it’s unbearable and then they’ll explode. But older ones don’t do that. Everything just ossifies as the bone takes over their entire system. She says they feel pain and she feels badly for them that they feel pain as they’re getting ready to leave.
Cause it’s going to take her a while to study. There’s not many Red blood cells. So they’re getting ready to leave. The troll hunter and the veterinarian share this kind of hug. So this might be his, his little, his woman on the side.
They continue traveling. Everything just seems a little awkward as you’re traveling along. It’s not like they really have a target to head for yet. They’re just out looking now. They find out that he collects articles about things that happened because of trolls. And in the newspapers, they explain them away like, Oh, this bridge collapsed.
Well, no, the troll hit its head against it [00:44:00] as it was walking along. He’s got this whole box full of records back in the camper. And
Stephen: Mulder would love talking to this guy, you know? Oh,
Rhys: absolutely. What’s the guy’s name from Midsummer. Can I take a picture? Yeah. Can I take, can I take a picture of this?
Yotnar are the largest and there looks like they’re off to Jotunheimen. It’s to the east of their previous location, further inland, further up in the mountains. He leaves these tires around and that’s how he knows if the trolls are staying in their area. Because of the get near tires, they like to chew on them.
So he gets to the edge of the, of the trolls territory and checks the tires. They haven’t been not on. So those ones have been staying within their range. One of them found where he stores the tires and tried to get into the container, but it couldn’t it’s a shipping container, but it kicks in the side of it.
They have one child and the gestation period is 10 to 15 years, [00:45:00] so it’s a slow reproduction process for trolls. But they also live a
Stephen: long time.
Rhys: They go into this field in the mountains, and there’s like these giant rocks everywhere, and he’s holding up this overlay to see if the rocks have moved because apparently that’s where forest trolls and mountain trolls fight each other by throwing rocks at each other.
Stephen: Which I love that overlay that he holds up. That’s like, that’s so perfect.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they have none of them moved. So there’s not much activity here. They’re still trying to find where this troll thing’s a problem. They get to this farm, looking into some troll activity. These trees have been knocked down by a tornado is what the government guy has said.
And they’re like why do you think it was a tornado? And they’re like, cause the guy said it was
Stephen: again, normal people. Oh, that’s the easiest explanation for me. I’m accepted.
Rhys: Hans says three trolls ran through there and that’s why the trees are down. It turns out there was actually an incredibly rare tornado that went through that [00:46:00] area of Norway.
That’s why all the trees were down. They didn’t actually have to, you know, set that up. It was like that when they found it, but maybe, maybe it was three trolls.
Stephen: Yeah. Maybe he really was doing a fountain footage.
Rhys: Yeah. They had across the fields in the dark of night, carrying flash pack, flashlights, and backpacks.
And they go into the woods. Kella is hanging behind. He doesn’t really want to go. There’s something, something that’s really bothering him about this. This is making him very nervous. Johanna and Thomas insist that he come along. And they’re afraid that they’ve lost Hans when they head into the woods, but they find him again.
He’s not going to leave him behind. He finds this abandoned mine where the trolls have been. Killa’s like, I’m not going in there. And Hans tells him there’s no trolls in there now. He pulls out this horn, blows on the horn. No one answers. He’s like, nobody’s home. So they head into the cave. Kelly is getting more and more nervous.
He asks for troll stench, which apparently comes in this big slimy thing and he [00:47:00] starts to obsessively rub it all over himself. Hans is like, this is a lair. There’s a whole pack of trolls living here. There’s evidence of sheep that have been torn apart. They’re about to leave when they hear the trolls coming back.
And it’s a whole pack. There’s at least five. And the trolls are coming into the cave. So they all retreat to the small hole and turn off their flashlights. And a troll like lays down right in front of the hole. Kela’s got the UV light on his camera and he’s rubbing troll stench all over him non stop.
He’s, yeah, he’s way nervous. Yeah. Don’t sweat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trolls lie down, start to sleep Kela’s still putting troll stench all over him. He starts to lose it a little bit. Hans is just taking a nap. Just pulls his hat down and goes to sleep. The trolls start to fart. Apparently makes the air almost unbreathable.
That was, that was funny. Again, Hans doesn’t seem to mind. But has used all the troll stench that he’s got. [00:48:00] He’s like, there’s gotta be more. And they’re like, what is your problem? And he’s like, I’m a Christian. And Hans is like, you better not start sweating, but it’s too late. The trolls look over towards the hole where they’re at.
And now the whole pack of trolls is like starting to rouse up and the team takes this moment to run for it. And they take off Hans is blasting trolls left and right with his little flasher gun and you can see the edge of the cave and there’s sunlight outside and you can see behind them, a whole group of trolls coming after them.
And then Kela starts screaming and the camera starts to move erratically and then it falls to the ground and the lens is broken. No more Kela.
Stephen: Yeah, he was one that fell earlier, too.
Rhys: Yeah, it’s true, it’s true. He’s gotta work on keeping his feet up. Well, no, not anymore. That’s true. Johanna finds the camera.
It’s still working, even with the broken lens. Hans calls these types of trolls, mountain Kings. There’s more of them in there. He says he’ll have to come back later to get them all. Thomas is [00:49:00] actually pretty broken up about the whole thing. Hans says they’ll have to drive to Dover to figure out why all the trolls are being chased away from that area.
He’s willing to drive them down the mountain if they want to quit. Dover is a little further north than Jotunheimen. It’s the next province up. Finn is waiting for them at his camper at Hans’s camper. He’s broken into Hans’s camper looking for the tapes. Finn’s nervous that the camera’s on. Is that camera on?
And it actually is, but Johanna challenges him. She’s like, people are dying. They don’t know about the threat from trolls and Finn tries to get the camera from her, but she runs away. And Hans asks if they want to continue with him. And Johanna is like, yes, she’s 110%. And this is where you see her personality.
She’s like doubling down. She’s had it with this. So they hire a new camera person called named Malika. She’s like done BBC documentary. She’s just got back from [00:50:00] filming lions in Africa. Thomas is like, that’s good. That’s good.
Stephen: And they’re just doing musk ox, right? Just must.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah, let’s let’s just get ready and go.
They
Rhys: never actually answer her. Right? They ask if she’s Christian. She says, no, she’s Muslim. And Thomas is like, does that work? And Hans is like, I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. I love that. It’s like, we’ll see, we’ll
Stephen: know after we find some.
Rhys: Yeah. So he’s gearing up his Range Rover, like, like as a set piece for Mad Max.
There’s spikes all over it.
Stephen: I would love to see a Mad Max style movie focused on trolls in the apocalypse. That
Rhys: Yeah. They come to a part in the road where it’s blocked by trees. He says a yacht nurse been through there a giant 200 feet tall. That’s what chased the Dover trolls down from here. And then Malik is like, you don’t all actually believe in trolls and they just kind of look a little guilty at her, you know, probably thinking the last camera person who has that question, they [00:51:00] get to this spot in the mountain.
There’s these high tension lines. He says they’re actually an electric fence used to keep the trolls in. And to confirm, he says, let’s talk to those clowns at the power grid. So they go down to the clowns at the power grid. The people who work there don’t know anything about trolls. Several lines were knocked down to the ground about three weeks ago.
They don’t know what happened to them or why they fell. Thomas is like, doesn’t it seem a little odd to you? These power lines just go in a circle. There’s nothing. The guy’s like, I guess, but you know, I never thought to ask why I just work here. Yeah. So they get back on the road and they’re heading deep into territory.
I mean, they’re up in the mountains, everything’s covered in snow. The TSS has cabins stationed around and that’s where they go to stay in one of those cabins. There’s this one shot where Hans is changing his shirt and you can see his side is nothing but scar tissue. They ask Hans why he doesn’t like going this deep into troll territory.
And he points out at one time when they were doing construction, they sent him in to [00:52:00] slaughter entire troll commit communities. Males, females, children, they didn’t care. And it’s an unpleasant experience for him. It kind of reminded me of a broader from bone Tomahawk. Oh
Stephen: yeah.
Rhys: Malika shots. And I think this is really cool.
Malika shots are different than kill us. His shots are, are very handheld and hers are much more like, she’s a more experienced, more professional camera person.
Stephen: Right.
Rhys: I think that’s a nice little. Little thing that they did there. Yeah. But there’s definitely something wrong with Thomas. He kind of almost has this little seizure.
His shoulder hurts a lot. He’s sweating a ton. He says he’s okay. Johanna looks outside and there’s this scene where there’s just flocks of birds all flying in one direction away from the mountains and it’s like, Oh, that’s kind of cool. It’s subtle. They don’t even mention it, but you can just see this.
Giant flock of birds fly.
Stephen: Yeah, I’m like, I’m glad they caught that on camera. Maybe you [00:53:00] should be nervous.
Rhys: You know? Yeah, I don’t think it matters if you’re in a cabin with the size of this thing. No. An hour before dawn, they all head out and get into the truck. Hans has equipped it with this giant light with a mounted seat on the roof.
And you can hear the troll in the background, Hans gets a phone call from the veterinarian. She’s called to report that she’s finished analyzing the troll sample. It shows signs of rabies. So that means Thomas has rabies.
Stephen: He’s denying it. No, I don’t have rabies. That’s dogs.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. It looks like this Jotun has spread rabies to all the trolls that they’ve seen.
So it doesn’t really matter how the movie’s going to end Thomas dies. Because you don’t contract once rabies starts to show signs. It’s not something you survive, right? I think there’s been one case And that person was put into a medically induced coma for [00:54:00] something like three months while the fever burnt through.
So yeah, it’s, it’s not a real survival disease
Stephen: when he’s feeling sick on the couch, they say here, drink this. He’s like, no, no, no. I don’t want that. So, I mean, another subtle little thing done.
Rhys: The hydrophobia. Yeah. Thomas wants to go to the hospital right away, but the troll’s already there. Hans tells them all to go inside.
And from inside they can see this giant troll like mountain size as it’s walking towards the towards the cabin. Johanna and Thomas are heading out and Malika’s like, are you crazy? And Hans is driving away in his truck. And they ask him if he’s leaving there. He’s like, no, I’m trying to draw the beast away from you.
So he starts playing What a Friend We Have in Jesus over loudspeakers. It enrages the troll who starts to chase after him and it reaches down to get the truck, but Hans has stopped. He’s in the seat with the giant [00:55:00] light and he’s flashing the light on the troll.
Stephen: Now my thought was right here. It was how much battery power does he have to keep flashing this huge ass light?
And that, that was my thought right here. And it, you know,
Rhys: it’s something they address because yeah, the troll doesn’t like it, but It does, it’s turning away, but it’s not turning the stone. He gets in his truck and starts to drive off and comes back to where the kids are. And he’s like the flash ran out of power.
Right. And then he opens up, you see, he’s just has a whole row of batteries. He starts to hook it up. The music starts again. And the troll is definitely getting mad again. And the kids are like, let’s just go. And Hans was like, no, we need to give him a few more doses of the flash to take him out. So we’ll wear him out.
So they’re having him just by having him chase after the car, which would make a great video game level. Oh yeah. Yeah. For ICO or
Stephen: something or not. I go shadow Colossus.
Rhys: Yeah. Oh yeah. Bonus [00:56:00] DLC. Yeah. If you’re wondering how big this thing is, that’s the, Look at that video game. That’s how big these things are.
Some hiker sees them and they’re like, Oh my gosh, stop and pick him up. So they pick the guy up. Turns out he’s a seismologist, probably up there picking up troll footsteps. They are all climbing in Hans gets back to get to the flash and Malika actually goes out to get some really good coverage of him flashing the thing.
Everything, everyone piles back in the car and they start running away again. And the troll starts to head in the other direction. It’s like, screw this. I’ve had it with this. Turns around and Hans is like, we need to get in front of him, which is. For some reason, this made me think of Empire Strikes Back and the ADATs.
Yeah, you’re right. As they’re driving this truck between these giant feet and the tail and everything. Yeah. And it was really
Stephen: well done. I mean, for a low budget movie and stuff, it was nice.
Rhys: [00:57:00] Yeah. The troll actually just reaches down, swats the truck, which knocks it on its side, everyone’s getting out, but the troll having had several doses from the giant flash gun and being exhausted and far from its house, the sun is coming up.
And so, you know, this is very much a Lord of the Rings. Dawn, take you all and be stone with you. So it’s like struggling. And then Hans puts on his backpack and grabs his little gun and he’s like, I’m going to give it the finishing blow. And it almost feels like he’s off on this suicide mission. And he tells the kids go down this way and you’ll get to a road.
It’ll lead you to the highway. And there’s this really great shot of this little tiny Hans and this giant troll and he’s shooting it, but he, he does it. The troll turns to stone and everyone starts to walk down the road. And then all of a sudden several vehicles show up. Finn has brought reinforcements this time.
And the kids are taken off. I don’t know where they think they’re running. They’re in the middle of nowhere. And like [00:58:00] the kids get tackled you know, Johanna falls. And then there’s this little thing that says, you know, like it cuts and there’s this little title card that comes up and says, Kelly’s body was never found in that, in that mind.
And then it leads to this prime minister at a news conference where the prime minister says, Norway has trolls. That actually was the prime minister of Norway. That’s cool. And what they did, it was kind of Forrest Gump ish, where they put Hans and Finn in the picture. What the, what the prime minister was talking about, there is a massive oil field up there, they refer to as troll fields.
And so he was talking about how Norwegian Norway has oil. It has troll fields, but they like cut the fields part out of it. And then pan over to where Finn is sitting because he’s superimposed on there. So that was all actually taken from real footage.
Stephen: That’s pretty, that’s even more [00:59:00] awesome. I loved that after credit scene.
That was really
Rhys: fun. But that’s that’s troll hunter. It’s an amazing little. Found footage. Don’t get mad at me, Andre documentary for him. A little story about, you know, trolls in
Stephen: Norway. So, yeah. And you know, he, he does a really good job referencing all the mythology and the Grimm’s fairy tales and all that type of stuff, this, you know, kind of adds to it in modern day.
It does a lot of ways
Rhys: he was saying that He made this film for Norwegians and he realized while he was doing it. And I think this is why he was surprised by his success. He was doing it as a film for Norwegians. And like, yeah, a lot of what was done here has been done in other films, but the other films aren’t Norwegian and they’re not dealing with Norwegian topics.
So he was doing like a Cloverfield just in a [01:00:00] Norwegian flavor specifically for a Norwegian audience. Yeah. And so when it got out and everyone was like, this is awesome. He was just floored by that, which I think is super cool. Absolutely.
Stephen: It’s definitely lighthearted, like almost serious. It balances that line without, because if it got too serious, it’d probably be pretty stupid.
If it was too lighthearted, it’d still be pretty stupid. It’s just that nicely balanced a little bit, you know, you may not find it out, laugh out loud, funny. And it’s just enough that you want to see what’s going on and all the trolls. Yeah. Good, good, good, good, good movie. It’s kind
Rhys: of on, on level with attack the block.
Stephen: Good.
Rhys: Where there are humorous elements to it, but the story is really good. Yeah. And, and, you know, it’s not so funny to make it unbelievable or I mean, unbelievable. It’s a 200 foot tall troll walking around. That’s a little unbelievable, but. It’s not so far over the top, but it takes away from it. So,
Stephen: yeah, loved it.
So there we go. Troll hunter. Good [01:01:00] fun. Troll hunter. Check it out. Get, get them out to close the captions in English with the Norwegian language. Cause the English dub is pretty bad.
Rhys: Yeah. I never watched the English stubs if I can’t, if I can avoid it. So
Stephen: overall we don’t recommend it.
Rhys: Yep. Yep.
Stephen: So what’s next on our
Rhys: hit parade?
So I started thinking about this. We had heredity, which we loved. And then we had the nun, which we didn’t. Yeah. And then we had troll hunter, which we loved. Coming up next is Jeremy Gardner, who did the battery, his film after midnight. Okay. And I’m going to tell you,
Stephen: yeah, I can’t wait because I do love the battery.
I know. And, and
Rhys: yeah, we’ll talk about it when it comes around. So
Stephen: do we have, do we have this one already? Do we need to get down? Okay.
Rhys: Well, I, I don’t know if we have it. It’s on to be, I think.
Stephen: Okay.
Rhys: Cause I’ve watched it twice already. Since just to kind of gear up [01:02:00] for it, but,
Stephen: all right, so there we go. I look forward to it.
So, all right, man, take care. Watch out for trolls, especially the sick ones.
Rhys: Yes. Later.
