Review #294: Troll 2 (1990)

October 2024 Horror Origins Review #11 - Troll 2 (1990)

Watch it on Tubi!

Here we are, folks. The granddaddy of all "So Bad It's Good" movies. Marketed as a sequel to a movie it has no connection to whatsoever, called "Troll 2" despite no trolls being in the movie, with a poster that shows some kind of werewolf with an axe and a child that is not in the film. It's gathered a massive cult following over the years, becoming the subject of a documentary about its fandom (2009's Best Worst Movie) and eventually getting an official sequel nearly thirty years after release.

Troll 2 is about a boy named Joshua Waits, who is about to go with his family to live out in the country for a month in a town called Nilbog, trading places with a farming family (like you do). However, Joshua's dead grandpa Seth has been visiting him from beyond the grave, warning that Nilbog is full of goblins who like to poison humans to turn them into half-men/half-plants (the goblins' favorite food). The family does not heed the warnings, and they soon become targets of the shapeshifting goblins and their leader, who uses the power of ancient druidic Stonehenge magic to try and turn the Waits into food. Will the power of goodness and deli meat be enough to stop these evil creatures?

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I was going to talk about this movie, because seriously, I could write a two thousand-word essay right now about how much I love it (and I almost did). But I'm going to try and keep it (relatively) short so you all can go watch it and make your own fun experiences.

I first found out about Troll 2 in 2006 or so, when a video was circulating on YouTube of various "Worsts" in films ("Worst Death Scene", "Worst Stunt", "Worst Acting Ever", "Most Random Line Ever", etc.) and one of them, "Worst Reaction", was a character in Troll 2 yelling, "They're eating her! And then they're going to eat me! OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD". Needless to say, I knew I had to track down a copy of this movie. I invited over a bunch of friends (some of which I hadn't seen in years!) and popped the movie in without any idea what to expect. We were laughing so hard during certain scenes that we had to stop, rewind, and rewatch them several times just to hear what was being said! Troll 2 instantly became a favorite of ours, with my wife and I watching it again and again (I wouldn't be surprised to learn I've seen it over a hundred times) and turning so many of its incredibly meme-able lines into things we still say to this day.

I mentioned at the top that Troll 2 has nothing to do with Troll; this is absolutely true. It was originally going to be called "Goblin", but at some point after filming it was decided it would be better to try and attach it to another movie to crib some of their success; for years I thought it incredibly strange that they would try and link it to Troll (considering I don't think Troll was winning any awards or was even considered well-known or successful), but having just watched them back-to-back I can kind of see some visual and thematic similarities between the two. I would definitely say it was likely complete chance that the two got associated (one of the producers was probably flipping channels or maybe browsing the video store and happened to see Troll and think, "Hmm, I wonder") but looking at one after the other, they sort of resemble each other. If I didn't know anything about Troll 2's production process I could have been convinced that it shared some credits behind the scenes. But, yeah, Troll 2 doesn't even have any trolls in it. We used to point at one of the rubber-masked, burlap-sacked goblin costumes that looked noticeably worse than the others and say, "The rest are goblins, but that one's a troll. So it should be called 'Troll too' because there's a bunch of goblins and a troll, too." 

Apparently the writers of this movie are Italian, and knew very little English when writing the script. When the actors were learning their lines, they asked if they could ad-lib some dialogue to make it sound more natural- and they were emphatically told, no. The lines had to be delivered 100% as written, in every case. So you end up with all of the dialogue sounding incredibly stilted and rarely flowing naturally or even making sense in some cases, compounded by the fact that ALL of the actors are terrible. I'm sure many of them have gone on to get better in the years since (especially since many of the actors were teenagers at the time) but man, the acting in here is BAD.

The thing that really makes Troll 2 so endearing, though, is that it's very clear (and has been confirmed many times in interviews since) that it was made entirely in earnest. Many of the other bad movies I've watched (including several this month) are clearly made to be tongue-in-cheek, if not outright intentionally silly. Not Troll 2- everything is played perfectly straight, everything is set up like this is the Great American Screenplay, and all of the laughs are unintentional (except the part where Joshua has to pee on everybody's food so they don't eat it and get turned into plants, that part was probably meant to be funny). Everyone is trying to make a good movie, so the fact that it's become famous for being so incredibly bad is the funniest joke of all.

But, here's the thing. I actually think the plot of this movie is solid. Obviously the dialogue is nonsense and I already said all of the actors are terrible, but I think someone could take this script and make it into something genuinely great. There's some clever moments in here, the ending twist is legitimately scary, and there's a lot of unique ideas and some real potential. They just biffed the execution so hard, and apparently the director still thinks he did a good job to this day (unlike other similar Auteurs such as Tommy Wiseau, who have at least pretended that they made it bad on purpose).

If you haven't watched Troll 2, I seriously cannot write enough words encouraging you to go watch it. It's a laugh riot from beginning to end, largely because it's bad, but also because it's REALLY bad. And after you've finished watching, you should watch the documentary, Best Worst Movie! It's all about the fandom that popped up over the years, there's tons of interviews with the actors that were in it (including one actor who literally walked to the shoot from his stay in a mental institute), and there's tons of footage of the Troll 2 convention that took place in 2008. It's a fantastic watch and perfect to pair with the actual movie.

Oh, one more thing to add before I close this out: Deborah Reed, the woman who played the Troll Queen in this movie, passed away last year in 2023. I was always up-to-date on what was going on in her life, because I was Facebook friends with her (I was also Facebook friends with Michael Paul Stephenson and George Hardy, who played Joshua and Michael Waits)- but the interesting part of this story is, SHE added ME as a friend! She saw me in one of the Troll 2 fan pages and sent me a request because she "liked my profile pic". What an honor!

Anyway, once again, please go watch this movie. You will not regret it.

Overall Rating: 6/10 Monkeys Blasting Off

Nostalgic Rating: 11/10 Stonehenge Magic Stones of Stonehenge Stone Magic

Best and Worst Actors: As I said, all of the actors are terrible. But one of the little games my wife and I played over the years was determining, line-for-line, who the best and worst actors are in this movie, and I'm sharing the results with you! The best actor by far was the homeless man on the side of the road that asks the family for a ride (after Joshua thinks he sees him as Grandpa Seth). The man has one line, and he delivers it perfectly normal, leading to a 100% success rate, far higher than anyone else in the picture. As for the worst actor, that honor definitely goes to the guy who talks to Drew after leaving the general store with his jug of milk- similarly only getting a few lines, the man tells Drew "Hey you." [Yeah?] Your friend had a message for you." [Who? Arnold?] "Yeah, that's him. He said to meet him in the house that looks like an old church. You can go through the woods, it's only about a mile away" and every single line is a total bomb. There's a lot of bad actors in here but this is the only one that doesn't have a single good line read.