Troll 2 (1990): No Trolls, No Relation, No Idea What It Just Did

Troll 2 contains no trolls. It has no connection to the 1986 film Troll, whose title it borrowed for marketing reasons after production wrapped. It concerns goblins, who are vegetarians, and who therefore must transform human beings into plants before eating them, a workflow the film treats as entirely reasonable. It was shot in Utah by an Italian director and crew who spoke little English, performed by local amateurs recruited through an open casting call, and it produced one line reading so magnificent it has its own permanent place in internet history. Every worst-movies list eventually arrives here. Ours just did.

The Plot, Such as It Is

The Waits family arranges a home-exchange holiday in the rural town of Nilbog, a name that took the internet years less time to decode than it takes the film’s young hero Joshua, who eventually gasps it out while reading a mirror: Nilbog is goblin spelled backwards. The townsfolk press green-frosted food on the visitors at every turn. Joshua’s dead grandfather Seth appears periodically to warn him, freeze time, and on one occasion hand him a Molotov cocktail. In the film’s most celebrated moment, Joshua saves his family from a poisoned feast by climbing onto the table and urinating on the food, prompting his father’s deathless scolding about hospitality. You cannot p on hospitality. He does.

“And Then They’re Going to Eat Me”

The line, though. Actor Darren Ewing, strapped to a potted-plant apparatus while a goblin advances on his half-vegetated friend, delivers “They’re eating her. And then they’re going to eat me. Oh my God” with the exact emotional register of a man reading a parking ticket aloud. Director Claudio Fragasso reportedly insisted the cast perform the script exactly as written, translation quirks and all, and refused most requests to make the dialogue sound like English. The result is a film where every conversation feels beamed in from a parallel universe where words mean almost, and only almost, what they mean here.

The Redemption Arc

George Hardy, who plays the father, went back to his day job as a dentist in Alabama and spent years unaware the film had become a phenomenon. Child star Michael Stephenson grew up and directed Best Worst Movie, a warm 2009 documentary about the film’s cast discovering their accidental fame, which played Sundance-adjacent festivals to genuine acclaim. Fragasso attended screenings expecting mockery and found sold-out crowds reciting the dialogue with love. He has since described Troll 2 as a film ahead of its time. We have decided to let him have that one.

Consumption Guidance

The scholars at Worst Movies Ever Made reviewed Troll 2 alongside its unrelated namesake back in 2013, a pairing we endorse for completeness. The film streams free with ads in most regions, shares a $10 double-feature Blu-ray with the original Troll in a packaging decision dripping with irony, and rewards group viewing above all formats. Serve green food. Bologna sandwiches optional. Double-line your hospitality. And should anyone at your screening attempt to explain the goblins’ nutritional strategy with a straight face, congratulations, you have found a keeper.