Editorials
The Abstract and Quiet Horror of ‘Fallout: New Vegas’
The old world is dead and the wasteland is all that is left. Humanity ekes out a sorrowful existence full of dread, violence, betrayal, and mania. But humanity is not alone amongst the dry wastes of the Mojave desert in Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas. There are other things, too—beasts turned monstrous after centuries of radiation exposure, human bodies wrought unknowable and unfamiliar after many warped mutations that were brought on by radiation and who knows what else. Yet, while these monsters, beasts, and ghouls are scary and threatening in their own right, the real horror of Fallout: New Vegas lies in the world itself—the landscapes, death, the wind, and all of the ephemera that brings Obsidian’s rendition of a post-apocalyptic retro-futurist world to unsettlingly quiet and desperate life.
In the opening moments of New Vegas, the player-controlled courier is shot in the head and left for dead by a man whose face will become familiar, but whose motives remain abstract for a decent chunk of the main narrative’s runtime. This cold-open of random death at the machinations of a world you’ve yet to understand or even slightly comprehend is in itself a terrifying concept. As a courier, you were just doing your job. You had a platinum poker chip to deliver and, hell, it seemed easy enough. But, no. Death by way of a 9mm bullet to the head swept you off your feet and into the warm bone-dry dirt of the desert. No monster did this. You were not torn apart by feral ghouls, eaten alive by cannibal gangers or eviscerated by the talons of a Deathclaw—a man, a human being, shot you for something you had no control over. That is genuine horror born out of abstraction. Nothing popped out of the shadows and shrieked until you screamed. A jump-scare, this is not.
The motives of desperate facets humankind are a form of horror all their own. We all fear death—whether we want to admit it or not—and in the world of Fallout: New Vegas the Epicurean arguments can be left at the door. Death is always lapping at the courier’s heels. Death runs the wasteland; it is a punctual currency that can get one anything that they desire. Power? Kill a gang leader for it. Caps? Kill a roving merchant and loot their still corpse. Death is as much a verb in New Vegas as it is punctuation. But what of the horror of it? The abstract horror that permeates New Vegas is, in part, fueled by the looming, heavy presence of death. The game begins with sudden death and, if one chooses such an ending, ends in mass-death that has yet to be seen in any other Fallout title, and the game constantly poses the question “Are you okay with this?” If so, satiate your bloodlust. If not, succumb to the burden of choice and find a way around a light trigger-finger. Yet, when the horror of death chooses to lie low, the unsettling nature of the world itself comes to be felt, and it elicits a feeling that is hard to shake.
Fallout: New Vegas takes place in a fictionalized version of the Mojave desert in 2281—two hundred and four years after The Great War of 2077 that rendered the world into a nuclear wasteland. Compared to the gray and cramped wasteland of Fallout 3’s Washington D.C. and the dense-but-not-so-cramped Commonwealth of Fallout 4, the world of New Vegas is purposefully desolate, caked in hues of orange, and unsettlingly quiet. The wind hardly even makes a sound as there are no trees for the wind to rustle or pockets of tall grass for the wind to flow through. There is just sand, rocks, desert flora, and dangerous and warped fauna. But once again, it is not the monsters or the humans who roam the Mojave that make it necessarily horrific or scary—it is the land, itself.
The Georgia O’Keeffe-like environments give the player a sense of isolation that is oddly comforting, but like all things in Fallout, that comfort is only a veneer for the true horrors within. The quiet and solitude come not from a place of contemplative isolation, but from a place of forced desolation. The Mojave is quiet because it is dead. What it was before the apocalypse was an oddly bucolic stretch of desert where highways patrolled by younger lovers snaked across the west, from Las Vegas to California. Now, the Mojave is a stretch of land that is only patrolled by marauders who welcomed the death of the old world and the soldiers who fight to restore the world to what it was before; even if what it was before failed them.
There are no more lovers’ lanes and swing music cannot be heard blaring from car speakers. Instead, the ephemera of a life sundered by Nuclear bombardment is all that can be seen and the only sounds heard are distant gunshots and the silence one hears before their ears can even tell that the head that they are attached to has been split in two by a tire iron. The sands of New Vegas’s Mojave desert is packed tight with blood, and the sheer horror of living after global annihilation is felt in every rock, cacti, and dust storm that seeks to make the desert seem alive and, if not alive, at least animated in the throes before death.
The abstracted horror of Fallout: New Vegas works because it is indirect. The direct horrors of the title—the monsters, ghouls, and the like—pale in comparison to the crippling fear and horror that exudes from the very landscape itself, and the sheer normality of death as an all-consuming force. The only light found in Fallout: New Vegas is the bright neon light that emits from the still-functioning New Vegas strip. But do not let the light fool you because under those tall casinos, neon lights, and attempts at grandeur are the same forms of horror that permeate the quiet Mojave—uncontrollable death, previously decided fates and while the swing music of the strip helps to mask the startling silence of the post-apocalypse, the veneer of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby can only last so long.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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