Injecting some down time to intimate a vast internal life is one thing, but needlessly approximating patches of wasted time is another, and Trollhunter's dully drawn characters suggest that the latter is closer to what André Øvredal came up with.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Troll Hunter offers high-caliber entertainment despite a low-budget production.
As with so many modern fantasy films, the sequences here seem designed to go viral on YouTube in a flash of coolness, not necessarily linger in the mind or heart.
The casting of Jespersen, with his sub-Wookie intonations and granite stare, is key: If this pillar of masculinity says there be trolls, I don't have to be bitten by one to believe it.
Village Voice by Nick Pinkerton
As de-mythologizings go, Trollhunter has neither the wit, nor art, nor social insight to honor the legacy of George A. Romero's "Martin."
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
It was an effective choice to shoot these majestic creatures vérité-style, with a jittery camera, but Trollhunter, unfortunately, is such an under-imagined knockoff of The Blair Witch Project that whenever the trolls aren't on screen, it verges on tedium.
The Trollhunter writers either have an abundance of imagination or they've been smoking a controlled substance.
Boxoffice Magazine by Steve Ramos
Troll Hunter may be a relatively low-budget fantasy but the film looks epic in all the right sequences.