Trollhunter

One of the nice things about living in Seattle is that it is a film town. In addition to the Seattle International Film Festival, there are beaucoup little art houses and second run theatres where you can go to find unusual indie films and different foreign features that never make it to your giant Cinemaplex 2000 Giganto Screen with THX AWESOMENESS SOUND.

The nice thing about these little theaters is that they neighborhood places, small in feel, cheap, and they remind me of places I used to go when I was a kid (on those very rare occasions I got to a movie when I was a kid).

So I’m surfing around today on the web, looking for something nearby to take the guys to and I find a Norwegian film called Trollhunter playing at the Crest in Shoreline (Seattleites know the place). I know nothing about the film, but the premise intrigued me: cinema verite “documentary” about some tough old dude who hunts trolls in the Norwegian wilderness, all on the QT because the government, natch, doesn’t want us to know trolls are real.

Good enough for me. I wake the wife from her lovely Sunday slumber, grab the kids and announce “We’re going to see Trollhunter!” (To be fair, I did ask the wife if she wanted to go and she said yes.)

The kids are skeptical, particularly when they find out it all in Norwegian, but I manage to overawe them with my sheer boyish enthusiasm and they went, one eyebrow raised in doubt and the other lowered in tentative trust.

Turns out the film is gobs of fun, in a sort of dark Norwegian way. Very dry humor, fun thrills, no gore to speak of. Sort of the X Files, crossed with the Blair Witch Project and the Lord of the Rings. Go see it with anybody 13 or older. Jolly fun.