Troll 2 (1990) Horror Movie Review

by Spider
(Salem, Oregon, USA)

The goblins of Nilbog are in the mood for a salad and they are planning to make it out of you!

Released: October 3, 1990
Directed by: Claudio Fragasso
Written by: Rossella Drudi and Claudio Fragasso
Starring:

Michael Stephenson as Joshua Waits
George Hardy as Michael Waits
Margo Prey as Diana Waits
Connie Young as Holly Waits
Robert Ormsby as Grandpa Seth

My friend Bill brought this movie over one Saturday afternoon claiming it was the worst horror movie ever. Taking this as a challenge, I immediately popped it into my DVD player to experience the horror which is Troll 2 and I will admit it is bad, really bad, in the top five worse horror movies I have ever seen, bad.

First off the movie has nothing to do with the original Troll other than the title; it doesn’t even have a single troll in the whole film. How can a movie called Troll 2 not have troll in it? Well apparently during production, the film was known as Goblins (which makes sense since the movie’s monsters are in fact goblins) and some foreign releases of the movie were labeled as such, but upon release in the United States, the title was changed to Troll 2 in an attempt to help sell the film by connecting it to an established horror movie, the 1986 Empire Pictures film Troll.

The movie starts out with a young boy named Joshua Waits being read a story by his grandfather Seth. Now if you look at the book cover you can see the book is ‘Davey and the Goblin’, a really cute children’s story by Charles E. Carryl. However the story grandpa is telling young Joshua is about a man named Peter, who was tricked by a goblin (disguised as a young woman) into drinking a green concoction that turned him into a slimy plant that the goblin and a bunch of his goblin friends then ate (no seriously - I’m not kidding). ‘That’s what goblins do,’ explains Joshua’s grandfather, ‘they are mean and evil and turn you into plants so they can eat you.’

At this point story time is interrupted by Joshua’s Mom and we find out that Joshua’s grandfather actually passed away six months prior. Joshua’s mom then proceeds to give Joshua a lecture that he just needs to stop his strange behavior of talking to his dead grandfather and move on like the rest of the family has. (This scene is so weird. The lecture would be strange enough - a mom telling a young child to hurry up and get over their beloved grandparent’s death - but it’s made even weirder by the fact that the actress looks like she is strung out on some serious drugs.)

Anyway after this we meet Joshua’s sister Holly (played by one of the worst actress’s I have ever seen) who is angry with her boyfriend Elliott for spending too much time with his friends. Holly gives Elliott an ultimatum - it’s the friends or her. Elliott promises to ditch the friends and come with her and her family on a trip they are taking to a remote country village called Nilbog.

The next morning arrives and Elliott doesn’t show, so the family takes off in their van with Holly crying that they should have waited longer and the father arguing that Elliott is a good for nothing and Holly should dump him. Mom breaks up the fight by forcing Joshua to sing ‘that song she likes’ which apparently is ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ and the trip to Nilbog continues, during which Joshua has a nightmare about turning into a plant. Also, Holly sees Elliott is driving to Nilbog but gives him the bird because she sees he’s accompanied by his friends. And Grandpa Seth in the form of a hitchhiker warns Joshua that Nilbog is in fact the kingdom of the goblins and that he and his family are in grave danger.

The family and Elliott and his friends eventually all make it to Nilbog where Elliott’s friends become great goblin fodder, we meet the goblins' druid leader, Creedence Leonore Gielgud, who uses the ‘Stonehenge Magic Stone’ to give the goblins power (no seriously - still not kidding) and Joshua struggles to keep his family from becoming a salad bar for goblins with the help of his dead grandfather.

Bottom line - this movie is terrible. The acting is bad, the costumes are bad, the dialogs bad, the props are bad, the plot is bad and there are plenty of scenes in the film that simply don’t make any sense (like the popcorn scene - I’m not even going to try and describe that). The only thing worth watching the film for is to get a laugh out of its total absurdness so I give it a 1.5 of 10 and warn anyone thinking of renting it to only do so if they are in fact looking for a terrible cheesy movie.