Troll 2 (1990)

Introduction:

Every few years a movie comes along that gets declared “The Worst Film of All Time!”. I always sigh and shake my head. Most of these aren’t truly bad. They are inept, inert or just kind of lame. But not the worst by any means (check out something like Starfighters or Monster A Go-go and you’ll know true pain). But sometimes you get a movie so amazingly inept and confounding that you’re left saying – oh bad movie, where have you been all my life! I had heard that this little flick was one of those.

Summary:

In a sequel (but not really) to the forgotten film Troll we follow the story of young Joshua (Michael Stephenson) and his family as they participate in a bizarre family exchange program. His family will live in a country house, while the country family of complete strangers will live in their suburban home.

While you’re still scratching your head over that one, we also learn that young Joshua is seeing dead people, or more specifically dead person, or even more specifically grandpa Seth (Robert Ormsby). Seems like the ghostly gramps is afraid that the family is in grave danger. Well because the movie’s title contains the word “troll” in it, we learn that goblins are out and about in the town and want to turn the family into plant based ooze and eat them. A few other dead-meat characters are introduced to they can be terrorized and it becomes a fight for survival that includes bologna, popcorn shooting out of a woman’s… um, I’m still not sure what happened in that scene, a guy turning into a tree, and some of the worst acting I’ve seen since Birdemic. Nothing can really prepare you for Troll 2.

Good Points:

• Embraces the horror and doesn’t care who it offends
• You’ll be able to say with confidence, “I’ve never seen that in a movie before”
• Some of the gross out effects are pretty good

Bad Points:

• The acting… oh sweet gods, the acting
• Never has a clear idea of who this movie is supposed to play to
• Hampered by a low budget (or enhanced depending on your view)

Overall:

This movie is bold in its ability to completely confound the viewer. One minute it seems like a silly kid based horror film. The next there’s a bunch of teenagers running around making out and getting killed, like a slasher film. There’s blood, there’s skin, there’s jump scares, and there’s people melting into green ooze and getting eaten up by little folks in horribly cheap costumes. The pace never flags as the movie just keeps tossing bizarre scenes at you. Such a clash of oddities makes it one of the most entertaining bad movies I’ve seen. While not as bizarrely awesome as House it is still heartily recommend for connoisseurs of the weirdly bad.

Scores (out of 5)

Visuals: 2

Sound: 2

Acting: 1

Script: 1

Music: 2

Direction: 1

Entertainment: 5

Total:  4

Trailer