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It’s been nicknamed “The Best Worst Movie of All Time”. It has the number 2 in its title,
despite not being a sequel to anything. No one knew about the film upon its
release in 1990, but it has now developed a major cult following. The poster
comes with the tagline
“Celebrate one of the most disrespected horror films in
recent history and fall in love with this genuine failure”
That sums it up perfectly to be honest. And so, here is my
review for the God awful ‘Troll 2’, which I forced myself to watch last night
with a mate, struggling to maintain my sanity throughout.
Probably the most famous scene from this film is a video
doing the rounds online you may have seen. A young nerd looks up to the top of
a staircase, where the remains of a girl (which have turned into green slime
and sludge) are being devoured by little creatures. In the most unconvincing
acting ever churned out, he spits out the words “They’re eating her. Then
they’re going to eat me. Oh My Gooooooooooooooood!!!” Look closely and you will
se a fly crawling across the guy’s forehead during the scene; something the
filmmakers simply didn’t notice, or was it left in on purpose? This fly, or one
that looks strangely like it, appears in a couple of other scenes, buzzing
around actor’s heads and possibly crawling across the camera lens at one point.
That is just one small snippet of atrocious acting, appalling filmmaking and
laughable story telling in this terrible movie, which was supposed to be taken
seriously.
I’ll try my best to describe the story for you, so just bear
with me here. A young boy named Joshua is being told a bed time story by his
Grandpa. The old coot speaks of a legend involving ugly little things called
Goblins, who trick people into eating and drinking food tainted with a green
poison. Once consumed, the poison turns the unsuspecting victim into a plant!
Then the Goblins finish the job by eating them. Charming right? This story
scares the crap out of young Joshua, who’s interrupted when his mum barges into
the room and asks him why he’s still awake. Then Grandpa vanishes – because
he’s actually dead. Joshua sees his ghost regularly however, but his family are
none the wiser.
The next day they head off on a family holiday, to the
dump-of-a-town called Nilbog. They swap houses
with a family for the weekend, and find a table of food prepared for them when
they arrive. Grandpa Seth pops up again, warning Josh to stop his family from
eating, or they will die. He foretells him of the Goblins and that he and his
family are in an evil place. So far so good, are you following? Well, from here
onwards, that’s were things take a turn for the worse and this film carries on
for another hour and half or so (which felt more like a few hours to me) to try
and tell it’s story. Be warned –
there is no plot to speak off, no structure, no consistency of story and no
reason why you should watch it in the first place.
The back-story behind the production of Troll 2 is as absurd
and unusual as the film itself. The writer-director was an Italian filmmaker, who
chose to shoot his opus in Utah, hence
he had an entirely America
cast – but the director didn’t even speak fluent English. The “actors” chosen
for the film were originally local people who responded to a call to be extras,
but ended up landing major speaking roles. The luckiest of them being George
Hardy; a dentist who wanted to be an extra but ended up playing the part of the
dad; and as it is plainly obviously to see he had no acting experience
whatsoever. The acting in general resembled something of a high school media
project, where the cast had had most likely only read their lines ten minutes
before, the scenes were shot in one take with no continuity maintained
throughout and the sets and props look liked they were borrowed from another
film or pieced together by an apprentice carpenter. The reactions, facial
expressions, postures and delivery of lines by all performers involved are
amongst the worst I’ve seen in my life – and I’ve seen a lot of movies.
Look, you don’t need to watch Troll 2 okay. I have gone
through it for you and will have to work hard to remove any memories of this
film from my mind in order to keep some dignity as an avid movie buff.
Seeing a film as bad as this makes me ask the questions, a)
Who comes up with this shit? b) What where the filmmakers and actors involved
thinking when they shot certain scenes? (the popcorn springs to mind, which is
a moment in the film you have to see to believe) and c) Who allowed this film
to be released to the public in the first place?
However, filmmaking has come a long way since 1990 and
luckily, most movies made today are of good quality, with decent acting and
plausible scenarios. I guess Troll 2 is a cult classic because it is so bad and
by watching it we can remind ourselves that any idiot can pick up a camera and
make a movie, but these days that job is left in the hands of capable people.
This wasn’t the case with Troll 2. And now that I’ve written this review and
released this viewing experience from my soul, I can move on. Happy days!
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