The horror genre is a fickle beast. At any given time, it stands poised to churn out both cinematic masterpieces and indefensible garbage. Unfortunately, among horror films, the latter seems much more common than the former. The genre is littered with films that exhibit poor ideas, poor execution, poor acting and poor plots.
This is likely due an over-saturation of the market and nigh non-existent quality control. The earliest horror films tended to rely on monsters and classic stories to create their atmosphere; as a result, films based on mythical beings like vampires and werewolves persist even to this day. As the pool of mythical monsters is large, containing everything from dragons to leprechauns, there is plenty of material for aspiring horror directors to draw upon.
Additionally, the great success of many low-budget horror films has inspired directors and studios to use horror films as a source for quick profit: They have the potential to give a high payoff with little investment. As a result, horror films are often short, hastily made and have very poorly constructed plots.
They exist solely to make a film as quickly and cheaply as possible. Such is the very sad case of a funny little flick named Troll 2.
The very fact that the phrase “funny little flick” is applicable to Troll 2 should explain precisely how and why this film fails.
Directed in 1990 by Italian director Claudio Fragasso, the film focuses on Waits family, as they vacation to the small town of Nilbog (hint: spell it backwards). Young Joshua (Michael Stephenson) is plagued by visions of his dead grandfather, warning him that he and his family will be killed if they follow through with their vacation plans. Refusing to heed their son’s warnings, the Waits family goes to Nilbo anyway, settling into their rented vacation home. They find it filled with food, a “gift” from the home’s previous owners. They soon come to realize, however, that the town of Nilbog is populated by Vegetarian Goblins, and that if they eat any food found in the town, they will turn into vegetable goo and be eaten by their neighbors.
Thus begins the Waits family’s struggle for survival against their hungry goblin persecutors.
Audiences will immediately notice one glaring flaw in the film right from the offset: the film is called Troll 2; where are the trolls?
The short answer is, there aren’t any. And trolls aren’t the only thing this film is missing.
The film was originally meant to be titled Goblins; however, in an attempt to make the film more successful, the title was changed pre-release to Troll 2, in an attempt to let it ride on the success of the original Trolls film. The film itself has no relation to the other films in the Troll franchise.
The film’s problems go well beyond just being disconnected from its titular franchise, however. Be it the film’s acting, effects or plot, the film consistently fails to deliver. The actors, throughout the entire film, read their lines in such a wooden manner that it becomes very difficult to take a single word they say seriously. When Michael Waits (George Hardy) shouts at his son to respect “hospitality,” his reading is so overblown and poorly written that it sounds like something out of a scrapped Simpsons sketch, rather than a dramatic horror film. The script’s lines are simply too long and unwieldy, utterly crushing the pacing of the film; everything simply takes too long to say or too long to do.
These scripting and pacing issues are somewhat understandable. When the film was in production, Fragasso and his team didn’t speak English, making communication between the cast, crew and director extremely difficult. Furthermore, Fragosso forbade his actors from “adapting” their scripts into more realistic lines; he opted instead to have them read the script precisely as it was written.
However, justification for poor filmmaking does not make the poor aspects of the film simply go away. The flaws are still just as present and just as unpleasant as they were before.
Even putting aside the acting and script, the plot of the film still manages to be lackluster in its own right. Now, outlandish stories are nothing new in the horror genre; after all, it is the genre that popularized blood sucking corpses and men turning to wolves by moon cycles. That being said, when making a horror film, the monsters in question have to actually be frightening. That is the whole reason they exist, after all. The goblins, unfortunately, fail miserably in this regard.
Standing roughly three to four feet tall, these creatures look insultingly fake, even considering that the film is 20 years old. The goblin costumes are bulky, unwieldy and clearly don’t allow the actors inside to move properly.
The masks don’t move, as they are clearly made of Halloween-bargain-bin quality rubber. The goblins’ hands don’t seem to move at all. As a result, the creatures are expressionless and lifeless — and not in a good way. The costumes naturally limit how effective these creatures are as “scary, murderous monsters.”
And even putting aside their costumes, the goblins don’t even act particularly scary. The extent of their fear factor is limited to running around in circles, waving their arms and shouting “ooooooohh.” They rarely pose any real threat to the heroes and are stopped multiple times in the film by something as simple as closing the door on them. In one particular scene, where a goblin successfully breaks in and attacks, it is defeated when the father of the Waits family simply picks it up and puts it back outside.
While their ludicrous appearance might have been forgivable under select circumstances, their inability to be at all threatening only compounds upon the bad acting and poor script of the film, draining away any semblance of scariness this film has to offer.
Consequently, the film fails on a fundamental level: it is a horror film that just isn’t scary. Had its scares been genuine, then the film may have been salvageable, but unfortunately, the scary scenes aren’t frightening. This is a film about people being turned into vegetables and eaten; it should, theoretically, at least have a few frightening moments. Unfortunately, with the acting, script, costume effects and bad story all working against it, the film’s scary moments simply cannot carry through.
In all, the film fails as a horror film. The script is bad, the acting is bad and the monsters aren’t the least bit threatening. I personally found myself laughing, more often than not. Had this film set itself up as a parody of traditional horror films, I could have seen it doing very well; it possesses all the necessary elements to create a very funny and very successful parody film: ridiculous concept, overblown performances and other such components suggest the film is poking fun at traditional horror films.
As it is, though, the film attempts to play the horror genre straight and clearly is making genuine attempts to be a scary movie. These attempts, however genuine, are ultimately drowned out by nearly every other facet of the film, which are so awful that the film simply has no chance of being scary. If you’re looking for an awkward chuckle, then give this film a rental, if only so you can say you’ve seen a truly awful movie. If you’re looking for something scary, however, the newest episode of Spongebob Squarepants is likely a better bet.
Overall Rating: 1/5 stars
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