Just couldn’t help but not share this little jewel of a movie. Its a found footage / mockumentary style like the Blair Witch Project.
Except the characters aren’t idiots. And its a film crew in the story so the shakey cam isn’t set to 11. Enough info and visuals are included to have you anticipating more.
Language is Norwegian, subtitled in English. Starts a bit slow but it builds. I hate subtitles but even I found it tolerable in this case.
I hated Blair Witch. Cloverfield was meh. This one I thought was great fun.
Troll Hunter goes into my short list of cute/quirky/just fun movies.
Please use spoilers if you want to talk details. And if you haven’t seen it, go watch it first. Half the fun is waiting to see how things develop.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I liked it quite a bit. A bit slower paced than I prefer, but it wasn’t painful in the least. Quirky, clever, and entertaining.
As for the criticism of Blair Witch, I get it, but it was a remarkably effective film, even with the annoying improvised dialogue and near-constant shaky-cam.
Cloverfield OTOH, I hated. Not only did it have possibly the most annoying character ever (though I do generally like TJ Miller otherwise), but it’s a textbook example of a type of horror movie I despise, which is one where the entire plot is predicated on the protagonists making exactly the wrong decision at every possible opportunity.
Things like the power transmission lines and why they are configured they way they are and the anger of the hunters at a poacher make me think that there are some inside jokes that only Norwegians truly get.
According to a Swedish friend (who, yes, is not Norwegian) who first recommended the film to me, there are a ton of cultural jokes and references in the film.
Note the only English spoken in the film is when the Norwegians need to communicate with the Polish laborers. Apparently Poles and other Eastern Europeans are common immigrant manual laborers there and can’t always speak the language well.
Also, I gather that some/many of the older Swedes in the film (including the guy who plays Hans) are comedians or comedic actors, so this is not that normal of a role for them.
I love this film so much, and recommend it as often as I can.
I thought Troll Hunter was great. It was extremely well done and a lot of fun.
As for Blair Witch, I saw it in the theater when it came out and I’m still waiting for the scary part. I think I read so much about it before it was released that it was a letdown when I finally saw it.
Weird - I was just talking to Uosdwis R. Dewoh about both these movies. Anyway, yes. Troll Hunter is a lot of fun - in fact I’ll probably re-watch it this week.
And while it’s not nearly as good, Rare Exports is fun in a WTF? bizarre, “are they aware of how silly they are? I think they are. But they’re good at pretending not to be!” way. For the curious, its themes are kind of a mashup of an Xmas episode of *Futurama *and John Carpenter’s The Thing. Maybe a soupcon of Home Alone tossed in too.
A belated bump, but we just watched this on Amazon Prime and really enjoyed it. Even if I didn’t get all the Scandinavian jokes, it was funny anyway. And Hans kicked ass.
Blair Witch was a movie which left most of the scares to your imagination. People with active imaginations saw it and found it incredibly effective. People with limited imaginations saw it and went WTF?
I saw the thread title and came in to recommend Rare Exports. My parents come up with one of these weird Scandinavian films every year or two… can’t wait for the next one.