Interview: 'Troll Hunter' director André Øvredal

Norwegian filmmaker André Øvredal's Troll Hunter is one of the most original films I've seen this year. The film follows a group of students who set out to make a documentary (this mock-doc is what the viewer actually sees) about a bear poacher who turns out to be a troll hunter officially appointed by the government.

Feauting amazing CGI for the recreation of the trolls and a memorable performance by Otto Jespersen, the film is a pitch-perfect combination of classic monster horror and black humour.

Here is the interview I held with director André Øvredal.

Imitation of Life: It's been a long journey since the film's first screening in Austin.

André Øvredal: Indeed. Actually that first showing in Austin was a secret screening. We were not supposed to have it ready for them, but they [organizers of the Fantastic Film Fest in Austin, Texas] wanted us to come with the film so much. And nobody had seen it. The fest hadn't seen it, our distributor hadn't seen it, so we just took there a digital copy we had made two days before. It was a fantastic showing, they really loved it.

IoL: It's been a 10-year gap since your first film, Future Murder. Why did you wait such a long time?

A.Ø.: Well, all that time I was directing commercials, but it's true it took too long. I was trying to figure out what to do as my first real feature film, because Future Murder was a student project. It was the final project from film school [the Brooke Institute in Santa Barbara], which I co-wrote and co-directed with my friend Norman Lesperance. He's still a very good friend, by the way. I wanted to come back into feature filmmaking, but it's a long journey and I wanted to make sure I made it right.

IoL: Given your declared admiration for American filmmaking and the mockumentary form you chose for the film, it's natural to think of films like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield as possible sources of inspiration. Did you think of the mockumentary form already in the writing process?

A.Ø.: That came immediately. I thought, here's a great idea: a film about a guy who makes a living hunting trolls. So if I make it as a documentary, it's gonna be a lot of fun, because then it's gonna be possible to shoot on a very low budget and it's going to add to the horror and the humour. 

IoL: Being in Belgium, there's another film that comes to mind: Man Bites Dog (C'est Arrivé Près de Chez Vous). Have you seen that Belgian film?

A.Ø.: Of course, that film has inspired me more then The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield. Man Bites Dog is very dark and violent film, but the balance between that bleak reality and the dark sense of humour is striking. I had the film in mind all the time, but we had to lighten it up to make it a family film. That's where both films get so different.

IoL: The film works so well precisely because of that black humour element, but it doesn't show in the first half hour of the film. Black humour appears with the introduction of the character of the hunter, played to perfection by Otto Jespersen (in the pic, right). Tell me about the casting of the actor for the role.

A.Ø.: Otto Jespersen is an extremely popular comedian in Norway. He's known for his very sarcastic and hard sense of humour, which was perfect for the mood of the film and for the character. In his own work as comedian he's very talkative, so I had to make sure he doesn't talk too much as the hunter. And that was hard for him as an actor, but I definitely wanted his very particular sense of humour. He was my first and only choice for the role of Hans. He was cast before I even had a script.

IoL: In the film, the first time you get a glimpse of the trolls is well into the second third of the film. While you were writing the script, was it ever an option to deprive the viewer of the actual image of the trolls?

A.Ø.: Before I knew I could work on a decent budget I thought that in the worst-case scenario we had to keep them in the shadows and just give a glimpse of them every now and then, but as soon as I got a bigger producer in Norway interested in making the film, there was no question. I wanted to show the trolls. They're wonderful creatures [laughs].

IoL: The CGI work for the recreation of the trolls is truly amazing, especially for this kind of budget. What was the starting point for the image of the trolls?

A.Ø.: Trolls are part of our folklore, but I wanted to shy away from the image of the trolls in the fairy tales, where they can communicate and are very much like humans. In the film, I wanted them to be closer to animals. The starting point was a popular book of tales, very similar to those of the Brothers Grimm, which was compiled from oral legends in the 1850s by two authors, AsbjØrnsen and Moe. The book, that my grandparents read to me as a child, has illustrations by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen. Those drawings, very different from the image of trolls usually exported to the rest of the world, were the basis for our work.

IoL: The false documentary format contributes to the film's realism, but there is also a very scientific approach to it, which adds to the black humour. The government's Troll Management Department is a especially hilarious element, but there's always a matter-of-fact tone which keeps the balance of the film.

A.Ø.: Making a documentary set today based on something so ridiculous as these big creatures requires these explanations. I wanted to explain the whole mythology behind: that Trolls turn to stone, that they explode if hit by sunlight. It is all classic fairy tale stuff, so I worked very hard to try to explain it from a medical perspective. My wife is a vet so I even had her explain to me how this could work in reality. So I came up with the idea that if they had a vitamin D deficiency, on account of the lack of sunlight, they would explode if they were hit by too much sunlight because they would become calcium. So I tried to figure out all these things and create a complete new mythology.

IoL: I was amazed by the last scene of the film. That's not an actor, but the real Prime Minister of Norway in real footage. How did you get the rights for the footage and, more important, how did you get your Prime Minister talk about trolls?

A.Ø.: [laughs] We actually asked him to make a statement in which he declared that trolls exist. I think he actually wanted to do it, bu the sort of had to say no because it probably would result in him getting requests like that all the time. However, we found this footage with an interview of him that we bought the rights for. In that interview he said something about an oil field off the coast of Norway, which is called the Troll Field. So he said the word 'troll' and we thought, hey, that's perfect. We re-edited everything with the actor playing the guy from the Troll Management Department.

IoL: The film was a big success in Sundance. What's your next project.

A.Ø.: Well, I hope to make a film in Hollywood soon. I've had contacts with a lot of producers over there and there's something very interesting coming up, still in the fantasy, sci-fi genre.