I’m not big on fan films, per se. They’re usually woefully under-funded, badly acted, and rely on help from snippets of source material that only serve to heighten how terribly produced the fan film is. ‘Painful’ does not usually begin to cover it.

That said, go spend 40 minutes watching the fan film The Hunt for Gollum.

Based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, the film—free to stream and watch—follows Aragorn around Middle Earth as he finds, loses and then recaptures Gollum for Gandalf to question. These events happen at the very beginning of the trilogy, and while Frodo is yet happily ensconced in his hole, Aragorn is mucking around Mirkwood (Epping Forest and parts of misty Wales in this iteration).

Everything about this non-profit labor of love is impressive: the settings and cinematography are lovely, as are the CGI backgrounds, and the prosthetics on the Orcs are of astonishing quality. The actors chosen to play characters who appear in the official films are passably close to their analogues, and the similarity of the costumes and props to the Jackson films more than makes up for it. Even the acting and dialogue are solid, especially for a fan film.

The team behind this film has surmounted the obvious obstacles with skill.  For instance, since Gollum is a major player in this short—but their budget didn’t extend to full-body motion capture—they find ways to keep him off-screen (and someone to do an amusingly good impression of Serkis). And instead of co-opting the music completely, the composers re-mix and rewrite some of the major themes and melodies from the Shore soundtrack.

A few things detract a bit from the venture, but by no means are negative: the fight choreography is about the quality that one would see in a Xena episode, and an interlude with Arwen is maudlin and overly cheesy. (But, it can’t be faulted for not sticking with its source material: so are the Arwen scenes from the Jackson trilogy.) Oh, and Gandalf’s wig is, um…yep. It sure is.

In all, this is an incredible feat of mimicry and innovation. Watch it, and feel your eyebrows rising in surprise like mine did.