3/5 stars

The recent surge of effects-heavy disaster movies emanating from Norway finally delivers its own King Kong variant in Troll, a slick, yet somewhat derivative monster movie from The Wave director Roar Uthaug.

Ine Marie Wilmann stars as a renegade palaeontologist who must convince the government that the country's capital, Oslo, is under threat from a mythological giant.

While the effects work is first-rate and the action efficiently handled, there is a frustrating lack of Scandinavian specificity on display, with Uthaug more eager to emulate blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Godzilla than introduce international viewers to his homeland's unique folkloric threats.

When construction of a railway tunnel through Norway's Dovre Mountains awakens a mysterious destructive force, prime minister Moberg (Anneke von der Lippe) is told that the damage may be the result of seismic activity or even some form of terrorist attack.

However, a series of bizarre indentations in the earth resembling giant footprints prompts her to turn instead to the expertise of palaeontologist Nora Tidemann (Wilmann), only for the scientist's hypothesis to fall on deaf ears.

Teamed with Andreas (Kim Falck), a bumbling government official, Nora is forced to turn for help to her estranged father, disgraced professor of Nordic folklore Tobias Tidemann (Gard B. Eidsvold). He raised her to believe in trolls and other fairy-tale creatures, but her need for scientific truth has since driven the pair apart.