Review #293: Troll (1986)
October 2024 Horror Origins Review #10 - Troll (1986)
It really says something when I watch two Full Moon productions and think, "Wow, these look like real movies". Because despite this production company being notorious for having churned out tons of low-budget movies in the 80s and 90s, these offerings look way better than anything else I've seen this month, and I honestly think a huge part of that is just the difference in how something looks when it's shot on film versus shot on video.
Anyway, I'm going to give a synopsis for this film and I promise you that it is 100% accurate:
Troll is about Harry Potter (or, more specifically, his son, Harry Potter Jr.), when the Potter family moves into an apartment building and an evil troll named Torok uses a magic ring to kidnap the family's daughter, Wendy Potter, and disguise himself as her. While Torok goes through the apartment building turning the tenants and their homes into portals to the various fey realms, Harry Potter Jr. befriends a kindly old witch living on the top floor, who teaches him enough magic to fight back against Torok and put an end to the troll's evil plans.
So, yeah. Eleven years before JK Rowling wrote her world-famous book series, Charles Band wrote a low-budget film where a kid named Harry Potter learns about the existence of magic and fights a troll. Weird coincidence, huh?
This is actually a fairly well-made movie and I doubt I'll have as much to say about it as most of the others this month. As with most Full Moon productions, there's a lot of clever puppet work in this movie (most of which I thought was way cuter than it was intended to be), and the majority of the effects were pretty well done. The acting was nothing special, the characters were varying degrees of bland, and I spent most of the movie's runtime unclear on what exactly was happening or what Torok's plan even was (I literally couldn't tell if Torok had kidnapped and replaced Wendy, or if he had possessed her, or if Wendy was being turned into a troll... I had to wait until the lore dump that comes at the 80% point of the film to find out) so I would have preferred if that were cleaned up a bit. But I wouldn't really call this movie bad, it just wasn't particularly memorable and I don't think I'm off-base when I say that I doubt many people would even know this movie exists if it weren't for the amazing disaster that is Troll 2 (but stay tuned until tomorrow for that).
It's worth mentioning that this movie really didn't feel like a horror film; it felt more like a typical fantasy adventure film set in the modern day. Apparently when the script was first being written it was intended to be more akin to a slasher (with Torok going from apartment to apartment murdering tenants) but once Full Moon had taken it on the decision was made to make it PG-13 and cover up the killings with a plot about uniting our world with the fey world or something. I'm not sure if it would have been better but I do wonder what this movie would have been like if it were a hard-R slasher film.
Anyway, this is a perfectly serviceable movie, but tomorrow you'll find out why we're REALLY here.
Overall Rating: 5/10 Dramatic Leaps Over Leaves
Nostalgic Rating: 3/10 Singing Goblins
More Fantasy Shenanigans: In Harry Potter Jr.'s bedroom he has a poster for a movie called "The Dungeonmaster". This was another Full Moon production from two years previous, about a demonic wizard who challenges a modern-day computer programmer to a battle between technology and magic. Originally it was called "Ragewar", but as the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons was growing in the US, they changed the name to try and cash in on the association (though they needed to insert a title card stressing that the movie was not in any way affiliated with the game or its creators).
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