607. Troll 2 (1990)

Starring: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey

Director: Claudio Fragasso

Running Time: 94 mins

Troll 2 is an American film, marketed as the sequel to ‘Troll’, but bearing absolutely no resemblance, about a family that holidays in a small country town and finds itself under attack by an army of goblins (not trolls) trying to either kill them or turn them into plants.

Basically, I have no idea what actually happened in this movie. It’s a prime example of terrible storytelling, filled with appalling special effects, dull acting and a simply uninteresting and unoriginal plot.

One thing that is interesting, however, about this film is how it was made. Originally worked on as a stand-alone film ‘Goblins’, the producers felt it would have little success (seeing as they could see how bad it would be anyway), so they basically pretended it was the sequel to the commercially successful film ‘Troll’ from 1986.

However, there is no connection between Troll 2 and Troll whatsoever, emulated by the fact that there are no trolls in this film. Instead, it’s an army of gremlin/ewok-like goblins that look like they were made out of papier mâché by a 9 year old, led by an evil goblin queen, who puts in one of the worst film performances I’ve ever seen.

The rest of the acting is just as terrible. The main character, a young boy, is as annoying as anything, while the rest of his family, although necessitating some sort of involvement for the plot to work, have little impact on the story, and their actors make that so by their terrible performances.

But what sums up this film is the clip above. This is the one reason I decided to put myself through an hour and a half of pain, and it almost seemed worth it for those 20 seconds, which are probably the showing of the worst line and worst acting in cinema history.

The story is completely incomprehensible, there seems to be a hidden message that sandwiches are humanity’s salvation or something, while the evident aim of goblins is to turn humans into human-plant hybrids, even though there is no, or a very poor, explanation for this in the film.

This film’s only saving grace is that it does almost fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. While it is terribly painful and dull to watch, its poor quality and horrifically bad acting make it totally laughable, and while I don’t respect that, it does take away some of the pain of watching it, so that’s why it gets a 2.0.