Troll 2

Troll squared? What are you trying to tell me.

"Be afraid... be TWICE as afraid!"

It's Thursday, and you know what that means, I've returned to haunt you with more movie reviews! Now many of you are probably at least passing familiar with today's movie, as it has been made popular at least in meme form by the internet. In particular there is one clip that frequently surfaced for a while, catching an especially shitty moment. While it is a funny clip, and certainly representative of the movie, I feel that no short length of the film can really encompass in all its grandeur the sheer insane shitty-ness of this movie. From opening credits to close this movie is sucking at 100% capacity like an industrial vacuum cleaning up a basement flooded by a burst septic system. Before I really get into the heart of the matter, I wanted to note a few things about the movie. Firstly, while the company that produced it bought the rights to Troll the first (because it experienced very mild financial success, despite also being dross) this movie has no relation to that one at all. Second, there are no trolls at any point in the movie. There are only goblins. The movie even specifically refers to them AS goblins, so that's important too. Third, the movie was produced and directed by an entirely Italian crew, and none of them spoke English, except for a set or costume designer (I don't remember which) who interpreted. Fourth, the entire cast auditioned for parts as extras, but were then cast in leading roles. Most are incredibly ashamed of this film, so I will refrain from referring to them by anything but their character names. None of them went on to anything much better anyway, so mentioning their names would only serve to further their already considerable public humiliation. Speaking of, let's talk about the movie itself.

Meet derp Goblin. Well Derp-ier.

Troll 2 is about a young boy named Joshua, whose yuppy family decides to participate in a house swap with a family from a farming community because they don't like the food in the city or something. The story behind this and most of the plant hating in the movie has to do with the director's wife, who was mad that her friends had become vegetarians (so this movie is a vegetarian protest piece in addition to being just plain old fucking terrible). Joshua is warned by the ghost of his dead grandpa though that the place they're going is full of goblins who will feed them really obviously green food that will make them plant people, and then the goblins will eat them. Stay with me here. So Josh is understandably terrified that he and his family are going to be devoured by badly masked goblins, especially there's this one mask that just looks especially stupid and it's always towards the front of the shot like come on guys maybe have superderp stand towards the back. I feel like their costume director was really terrible, but he was like the directors little brother and no one wanted to hurt his feelings so they had to use the derp mask in EVERY scene so that his self-esteem wasn't damaged or something. ANYWAY the family goes to the town of NILBOG (which no one realizes is goblin backwards until the kid literally sees the sign in a mirror and then proclaims it to the open sky) where they find that everyone is really weird. Like I think they're supposed to seem menacing but really they just all give off this really rapey vibe, like I'm actually watching Deliverance or something. The family arrives to a dinner of gross neon green vomit food, which they quickly attempt to eat. Josh is urged to stop them by his grandpa, who uses his magic powers to freeze time. Josh takes this opportunity to take a piss all over the food. This leads to a stern talking to from his father, about how you can't piss on hospitality. I am not fucking kidding.

And that's how I became king of hell!

As a sort of additional wrinkle in the plot, the family is also followed into the wilderness by daughter Holly's would be boyfriend Elliot, and his "boys" who all travel with him in their RV, and sleep half naked together in a single bed (there are four of them altogether). Elliot lures them to the countryside with the promise of rustic backwoods sluts, which seems unlikely but I mean, I guess these guys don't seem too bright anyway and the whole movie is idiotic so whatever. Holly really hates Elliot's friends, and seems to insinuate that he can either have friends or her, which is a tough choice given that she is weird and irritating and vulgar and his friends are goonish morons (also worth mentioning: The movie opening features a weirdly long scene of Holly lifting free weights in a really high cut unitard. I guess maybe it was supposed to be sexy? Is that what people in Italy like?). These clowns are obviously included in the mix so they can die too. Which unfortunately not as many of them do as I might've preferred (you know, everyone).

YOU CAN'T PISS ON HOSPITALITY.

So Josh is warned that he has to help his family escape Nilbog, even though they are oblivious to all the molester vibes coming off the locals, who are weirdly intent on feeding them I would say. We are treated to a particularly weird scene where a general store owner sells one of Elliots dopey friends some really questionable and one might note unrefrigerated milk. The general store guy seems insane, and fun fact, that is because he actually was. The "actor" who portrayed him was on a day trip from the mental institute where he was a patient, and recalled in an interview later that he had smoked a ton of weed before giving his performance, and had no idea what was going on. So that's awesome.

Listening to her introduce herself twice was really hard.

So Josh is pissing on stuff, people are getting eaten by goblins because they drink bad milk, everyone is weirdly sweaty all the time, Now I need to talk about Creedence Leonore Gielgud, who is dressed like a ridiculous gothy witch at a 30-something Halloween party taking place in 1985. She overacts more than maybe any human being who has ever lived, and it is really creepy and awkward and difficult to watch. She is we learn the queen of the goblins or something, and they all come from Stonehenge I guess, and they have an evil stone that needs to be destroyed to destroy them. The Grandpa is banished by one of the goblins, purportedly back to Hell, which is interesting because it implies that he has risen from the Pit in order to use the power of Satan to shoot lightning at goblins and save this kid and his unlikable family. Grandpa does seem to be teaching Josh to make Molotov Cocktails, so I guess... yeah that's kind of suspect. Ultimately we discover that the only way to defeat the goblins is for Josh to push lightly on their rock, while eating a bologna sandwich. Not just any sandwich though, this guy is A DOUBLE DECKER. I know what you're thinking. Justin you card you're just making that up. WELL NO I'M FUCKING NOT THAT'S REALLY HOW THE MOVIE ENDS.

Actually an insane drug addict.

At the top of the weird/uncomfortable/pointless scale though is a scene in which Creedence seduces one of Elliot's friends, with an ear of corn that they sexily eat together while popcorn is shot at them, and then the room is full of popcorn and Creedence leaves, but the guy is fine except buried in corn. This scene is weird, makes me feel really uncomfortable to watch, and has no effect on any other part of the movie. I'm not sure if the lady that played her was on drugs during the filming, but I imagine they helped to relieve the burden of shame she felt afterward for having such a prominent role. Really though, it's unfair to blame the actors. With a script written by someone who only speaks very poor English, how could you expect better? If you're wondering why they didn't just ad-lib... well they wanted to, but the director wouldn't let them. According to members of the cast, they were forced to recite lines verbatim from the script, which they received in small parts. The director denies this, and during a panel stormed out, calling everyone else present "dogs" while he did so. So yeah that's a thing.

Goddamn corn lobby's got their grubby fingers in every pie.

I could go on and on about the ridiculous, possibly satanic(?) things that happen in this movie, but really you should just watch it yourself. It is so bad as to defy imagination. Also don't let its shit visuals and soundtrack fool you, it was actually made in 1990, not 1984. I believe you can still stream it on Netflix, and I know it's on Hulu as well, so you should take advantage and treat yourself to the shittiest movie I've seen in months. And I mean I watched the Bling Ring a couple weeks ago!