Mladen and Del review ‘Troll 2’
Image courtesy of Netflix.
“Troll 2” Starring Ine Marie Wilmann as eccentric troll chaser Nora Tidemann; Kim Falck as lovable self‑sacrificing Andreas Isaksen; what‑a‑great‑name Mads Sjøgård Pettersen as studly but kind Major Kristoffer Holm; Sara Khorami as sultry scientist and bureaucrat Marion Auryn Rhadani; and others. Directed by what‑another‑great‑name Roar Uthaug. 1 hour, 45 minutes. Rated TV-14. Streaming on Netflix.
Plot summary: After centuries of hibernation, a gigantic mountain troll is awakened and goes on a revenge-fueled rampage. A scratch group of lovable but eccentric scientists and lovable but bumbling bureaucrats must stop the creature before it reduces Norway to rubble.
Spoilers: Yes, this is a movie review after all.
Mladen’s take
When I imagine a troll, it’s a humanoid shape with a size that falls somewhere between a dwarf and an ogre or, in real world terms, between Rubio and Trump. I’m wrong about their size, if you believe Norwegians know more about trolls than me, a Croatian. In both the original 2022 “Troll” and the recently released “Troll 2,” these mythical creatures are, what, 15 stories tall, sentient, and scruffy. Without question, they should take some hair styling cues from Del.
While “Troll” is a very good movie, “Troll 2” is not. It just makes the cut as a B- because it’s too derived from the first “Troll” movie and predictable. But, “Troll 2” does have some merits despite its paint‑by‑numbers plot.
Ah, yes, the plot.
The federal government of Norway has shackled a tough‑looking mature male troll that was found hibernating. How do I know the troll is a male when its pubic region is covered by a thick growth of lichen? It lacks boobs, that’s how. Come to think of it, the algae beard is a bit of a giveaway, too.
Anyway, government scientists have reached a dead end studying the critter. They recruit troll whisperer Tidemann to help. She becomes instantly disgruntled because the bureaucrats and the military are treating the troll as an object and a threat because the troll in the first “Troll” movie rampaged trying to find its home in the mountains. Poof, in no time Tidemann is at the top of the scaffold erected near the troll. She approaches the troll, touches its warty nose, hums a Norwegian lullaby, and, whamo, the troll awakes. Mayhem ensues after the grandaddy of trolls, who I’ll call Buster, breaks free, steps on a few humans, and busts through the mountain redoubt where the government has been hiding him.
You may be asking why Buster is so angry, so determined, so focused on whapping Norway, whose people I’ve always thought of as being among the happiest and nicest in the world. Well, as it turns out, Norwegians haven’t always been so nice, especially when one of their medieval kings decided to force feed them, and trolls, Catholic Christianity.
I was enjoying the movie until Tidemann, accompanied by Isaksen, Holm, and Rhadani, commits a very non‑science‑y act. She goes to a cave where a late puberty troll is hiding from the world. She then asks the kid troll to stop the adult troll from wrecking Norway. And, I’m like, girl, ain’t no way your troll, ironically nicknamed “Beautiful,” stands a chance against Buster. So, yeah, Buster takes out Beautiful without the former every laying a hand, a paw, whatever, on the latter. I concede that the no‑fight is one of the cooler scenes in the movie. It deftly illustrated that Buster was a smart troll, indeed, but that scene, and a couple of others, aren’t enough to elevate the second movie to the original film’s level.
The CGI in “Troll 2” is good. The characters likable. The soundtrack adequate. Despite my unenthusiastic grade for the film, I recommend that you watch it. “Troll 2” has just enough moments sprinkled through its reasonable runtime to make it enjoyable. And, though you don’t need to see the original “Troll” to enjoy the unoriginal “Troll 2,” it won’t hurt. The way I figure it, you may as well see both to better prepare for the third Troll universe film that’s on the way.
Del’s take
First things first, let’s sort out the plethora of troll movies.
Back in the ’80s we had “Troll,” a not very good B horror movie, followed by a sequel in 1990, “Troll 2.” Didn’t much care for either. The trolls looked like Rat Fink dolls. (Fun facts: The lead actor in “Troll” was Noah Hathaway, who played the young boy Boxey in the original “Battlestar Galactica,” and Atreyu in “The Neverending Story.” His “Troll” character’s fictional name was “Harry Potter.”)
Then in 2010 came “Troll Hunter,” the first feature-length movie I watched on Netflix. That movie blew my mind. Or it might have been the six-pack of Corona I consumed while watching it. Either way, “Troll Hunter” set the standard for troll movies. I mean, c’mon on – a troll as big as a mountain contracting RABIES? What a trip!
Then in 2022, Netflix rolled out “Troll,” unrelated to the ’80s “Troll” or “Troll Hunter.” This new troll became Norway’s Godzilla – it stomped around, squashing buildings and whatnot. No fire breath. That could have helped. I liked it, though not as much as “Troll Hunter.”
Now we have “Troll 2,” another Netflix production and a sequel to the 2022 film. Same characters, same dilemma, just a tad sillier.
This movie’s strong points are its special effects, its setting (I never tire of seeing Norway’s beautiful back country and fjords), and its premise – that once, human beings and giant, humanoid creatures lived side-by-side in harmony, until religion arrived. That’s when trolls became persona non grata and were hunted down by marauding humans until only a few relics, unknown to modern man, remained within the deepest recesses of Norway’s Dovre Mountains.
“Troll 2’s” problems are as follows: It skimps on action, instead wasting valuable time re-establishing character backstories and hinting at romantic entanglements that go nowhere. As it happens, the pogrom against trolls is just one big screw-up resulting from a torn piece of paper – not even plausible in the error-prone Trump regime. Also, in my opinion, it relies too heavily on the viewer having seen the first movie. Apart from the viewpoint character and her military pal, I struggled to remember who these people were.
You’ll forgive my lack of wokeness on this issue, but the thought of gigantic, possibly rabies-infected monsters striding through major population centers leaves me feeling less concerned about their right to exist and more concerned about my right to not get squashed flat or eaten by said gigantic monster, which is exactly what happens in one ghastly scene where an enraged troll rips the roof off an Alpine disco and makes a quick snack of the badly dancing inhabitants within.
“Trolls 2” doesn’t give you much opportunity to worry about that. Instead, we see the military commander tasked with stopping this thing bringing his new love interest along on missions, which confused me. I thought the Tidemann character was his girlfriend. She’s not? Somebody better let her know because she, in her eccentric way, is still flirting with him. We see the newly married bureaucrat trading Star Trek puns with his wife, who is pregnant with their first child, who will be named after a Star Trek character. At that point you know he’s doomed to Red Shirt status. And we see the military commander’s bitchy girlfriend undergo a total character transformation so that by movie’s end she’s solidly Team Troll. It’s all a little too convenient and trite for my tastes.
Sounds like I didn’t like it, eh? Not true. It was OK. I don’t think it was equivalent to the first “Troll” but the premise was so interesting I couldn’t NOT like it. I’ll go along with Mladen’s grade of a B-, though I should give it a B just to disagree with him.
“Troll 2” continues a legacy of Scandinavian filmmaking that does not receive the credit it’s due. “Troll Hunter” is a classic, as is the Norwegian adventure movie “The Wave” and its followup, “The Quake.” Throw in the Finnish Nazi zombie movies “Dead Snow” and “War of the Dead,” the two Sisu films and the superb Swedish horror film “Let the Right One In” and you’ve got a fine collection of provocative – and evocative – speculative movies that deserve more attention than they’ve received.
“Troll 2” is not on the same level as those films but it comes close.
You can see it on Netflix.
Mladen Rudman is a former journalist and technical writer. Del Stone Jr. is a former journalist and writer.
When I saw the trailer, it led you to believe there was going to be more troll-on-troll action reminiscent of War of the Gargantuas. Sadly, that never happened.