#kaiju

Recently, I've been going down a folklore rabbit hole. I'm the kind of person who, once I start down a rabbit hole, finds it quickly becomes an absolute obsession. This particular journey started with a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) called Vaesen (check out Free League's website for more info). I'll talk more about Vaesen in a later post, but for brevity’s sake—so I can get straight to the review of Troll—it is heavily based on Scandinavian folklore. I started looking up movies with that same theme, and you can guess what came up. Troll has been sitting on my Netflix watchlist ever since it debuted in 2022.

Troll is absolutely steeped in Nordic folklore. It plays out like a Norwegian love letter to the genre where "kaiju meets folklore." Being a massive fan of Godzilla, King Kong, Gamera, and other giant monster franchises, this movie seemed like an excellent fit for my current obsession. It did not disappoint. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. I'll try to keep this review spoiler-free, but just know the movie has been out for over three years now, so I don't think I'm giving too much away. Structurally, it hits all the beats of a classic kaiju movie, beat for beat.

A Brief Synopsis

When a blasting operation working deep in the mountains of Dovre, Norway, accidentally frees a skyscraper-sized stone troll, a government desperate to understand the creature's motivations sets an intrepid group on a crash-course adventure.

It takes Nora Tidemann, a paleontologist; her father Tobias, a former professor of folklore; Andreas Isaksen, the Prime Minister's assistant; and a sprinkling of help from the military in the form of Captain Kris Holm, to solve this ancient puzzle. All the while, the massive creature is relentlessly plodding its way toward Oslo, the capital city of Norway. Together, they must try to stop it before it destroys the entire city.

Thoughts on Theme and Style

At its heart, Troll is a classic "wannabe Hollywood disaster meets monster movie." Seriously—Tokyo has Godzilla, the U.S. has King Kong, and Norway has... a Troll. Albeit, a gigantic Troll. I know I'm coming off as really sarcastic here, but seriously, I love it. That tongue-in-cheek grandeur is exactly what it feels like director Roar Uthaug was going for, and in my opinion, he succeeded in spades.

The troll itself was pulled off brilliantly. The CGI was amazing and didn't detract at all from my immersion in the movie. I loved the design of the creature and how the film compared Uthaug’s vision with classic pieces of fairy tale artwork. As with my other favorite kaiju movies, my favorite parts are always where you get to see the sheer destruction the monster causes. I felt like the pacing and the build-up to revealing the monster were done incredibly well. We don't get to see all of the monster at first during its early interactions, but when we finally do, it's used to great effect.

The atmosphere and setting are also used beautifully. I love the way the landscape was filmed. There are tons of sweeping visuals of the Norwegian scenery, shifting from awesome, high mountain peaks to the concrete and asphalt streets of Oslo. For someone who yearns to explore distant lands, this movie gave me a great presentation of what Norway actually looks like. Real locations like Nordenga Bru and the Ekeberg area were used, as well as the actual Royal Norwegian Palace in Oslo. The filmmakers used these real-life locations to great dramatic effect.

The film has a run time of 1 hour and 41 minutes. Now, I am not a purist, so I watched the film with the English dubbing. I felt it was done very well, and at most points, I even forgot it was a dub and thought the cast was natively speaking English. Don't get me wrong, there were a few parts—as there always are in foreign films—where the dubbing is obvious, but for the most part, it was carried out seamlessly.

The characters were a lot of fun and the actors portrayed them beautifully. I particularly found myself liking the character of Andreas Isaksen, the Prime Minister’s aide portrayed by Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen. I think I really identified with his Star Trek nerdiness. On the opposite side of things, I loved to hate the Minister of Defense character portrayed by Fridtjov Såheim. He did a great job playing the villain of the film.

The Final Cut

If you enjoy a little bit of folklore horror mixed with a massive kaiju spectacle, then this film is absolutely for you. It's a fun, easy watch that earned a great place down my current rabbit hole.