There are so many things I hate about having such easy access to so much media at all times:
- Watercooloer events are almost non-existent because, with so many viewing avenues, only one other person at the office watched what you watched
- Pop culture fluency is dead, because there is so much current content, nobody has to watch re-runs or media from the past
- The sheer amount of options is overwhelming, and you oftentimes end up watching your fave for the 30th time instead of experiencing something new
But what I absolutely love about this era of entertainment is being sick at home, watching random things that pop up, and discovering an absolute mess of a B-monster movie out of Norway and watching it from beginning to end. I really don’t have any *great* things to say about Troll, so you have to watch it immediately!
Without giving too much away, the premise is bonkers. Forget what you know about trolls being cute, neon-haired dolls, or grumpy little dirtballs living under a bridge. These are giant trolls of the Scandinavian tradition where they feed on the blood of Christians and stomp on people’s houses. The citizens of lovely Norwegia are digging into a mountain when there’s an explosion and the country’s greatest minds have to figure out what happened. Was it a pocket of methane? Are there sinkholes in the mountain?
One lone, plainspoken, lady scientist says “obviously those are footprints and that screenshot is of something humanoid.” And then we’re off to the races!
What follows is a monster movie meets disaster movie meets austere Norwegian family drama as your Typical Team of Scientist, Soldier, Bureaucrat, and Nutjob try to chase down this big monster before it destroys Oslo. It is so much fun! I also had a fever of 101 degrees, so take that with a grain of salt and an Ibuprofen, but I really did have a ball. So, it could be that I enjoyed it because I was only semi-conscious. Or! It could be that this B-movie is up there in Tremors territory of terrible monster movies. Or! It could be that I’m weirdly tapped into Norwegian culture, as I did have to pause the movie when the soldier popped up because I thought I recognized him (and I did, he was in my favorite holiday television series, a Norwegian dramedy called Home for Christmas that you must binge during the next holiday season).
What I found most disconcerting were the fleeting social vibes of the movie. As a pretty fervent anti-American American, I always feel that the United States has a lock on distasteful archetypes like the bloodthirsty jarhead or the strongman politician, but that’s just my America-centric-ness showing again! I mean, we had to get that stuff from somewhere, so of course we got it from Europe! And the fact that I’m supposed to root for the humans when they’re the colonial settlers in this movie is a reach, but the director did as much as could be done with that angle and I’m okay with the outcome. You’ll just have to decide that for yourself.
And one last thing: listen to the opening of this score!!!
Is this not one of the most stunningly cinematic score-openers in recent memory? Johannes Ringen kept the vibes of a monster movie with the coldness of Scandinavia and the energy of a thriller running through most of the score. And, because the troll came out of a mountain, you get some flashes of Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” so he really did what needed to be done.
All in all, if you want a dumb monster movie to watch, you’ve done all the recent Godzillas and King Kongs, and you want something out of left field, you could do worse than an hour and half in Norway with Troll. And if you really love it, you’re luck: the sequel has already been greenlit.
Score: 7/10
Leave a Reply