Few movies within the "so-bad-they're-good" pantheon have quite the same legacy as Troll 2, and there's good reason why the 2009 documentary about its legacy was called Best Worst Movie. Troll 2 was released back in 1990, and in the years since has built up a considerable reputation for being one of the most entertaining movies of all time... out of those movies that aren't particularly well-made, at least. Even the title is funny, because despite containing a "2," it's generous to even call it an unofficial sequel to the 1986 movie Troll, with different characters, actors, and story. And even though the other part of the title is the word "Troll," that's not a word used throughout the movie; instead, the "titular" monsters are referred to as goblins.
Moving past the title and getting to the film itself makes for an even wilder and more hilarious time. As a horror movie, it fails on almost every level, and the vast majority of the time, it's far too silly, strange, and unintentionally funny to take seriously as something genuinely scary. Yet getting to the ending (if viewers are strong enough to survive that far) leads to something that's borderline unsettling, at least in comparison to what's come before. It may not redeem the movie as an underrated horror masterpiece, but it is at least a fascinating conclusion, and may even make fans of bad movies reconsider the very nature of "so-bad-it's-good" cinema.
Why Is 'Troll 2' Wonderfully Terrible?
Before damning Troll 2 with faint praise, it's important to highlight just why it's held up as something of a classic within the realm of bad movies. Truly, before 2003's The Room stole viewers' hearts (and spoons), Troll 2 was arguably the go-to good bad movie. Plan 9 From Outer Space was also a contender, but as a movie from the distant past of 1959, some of its goofiness comes from it being an inherently old movie. Instead, Troll 2 is a slightly more modern work of unintentional art, taking a fairly standard horror movie premise (a family moves into a strange town that's secretly inhabited by monsters) and warping it in strange, inexplicable ways that make for a rollercoaster ride of emotions and hilarity.
Certain moments live in infamy, largely thanks to internet memes and out-of-context clips posted on YouTube. The "They're eating her! And then they're gonna eat me!" clip (complete with a random fly crashing the scene) needs no introduction, and neither does a slightly less well-known (but even more shocking) scene involving corn. There's also generally hammy acting, ridiculous dialogue, cheesy-looking goblin costumes, and other things that stand out for being silly, like the town being called "Nilbog," which of course not-so-subtly foreshadows the goblin population that lives there. Further attempts to explain the odd charm of Troll 2 might fall flat, as nothing lives up to actually watching it. It's thankfully consistently surprising and entertaining, unlike some other bad movies that may be funny for a little while, but eventually feel tedious. Troll 2 is just that bad... or that good?
Why 'Troll 2's Ending Kind of Works
The way Troll 2 ultimately concludes - wrapping everything up in a surprisingly neat way, only to have a sudden and cruel twist ending - is a fairly reliable way to end a horror movie on a high. This is one of the things that Troll 2 seems to get right, whether it's by chance or intentional. If the rest of the movie is supposed to be scary or unsettling, it doesn't work. But the way the ending plays out is significant. It honestly kind of works. The family seems to defeat the goblin population and escape the town of Nilbog, as the young Joshua was finally able to convince them of the danger they were in. With the help of his ghost grandfather, Seth (it makes even less sense in context), Joshua takes place in a ritual that wipes out the town's goblin population. The family leaves and arrives back home. Everything seems fine.
However, it turns out that the food at their house was poisoned without their knowledge, and not all the goblins died after Joshua's ritual. In this film, poisoned food turns any person who eats it into a green, vegetable-looking corpse, and at that point, their dead body becomes food for the goblins. In the final moments of Troll 2, this is revealed to have happened to Joshua's mother. He walks into the kitchen to see his mother being eaten by goblins whose presence was unbeknownst to him until that moment. He's understandably shocked by the sight, he screams, and then the movie suddenly ends. That it happens so suddenly, and to a major character, and cutting off in a way that could imply Joshua's next makes it weirdly unsettling. Compared to the hilarity of everything that came before, it's quite jarring, and even though the rest of Troll 2 casts a dark, green, comedic shadow over it, there's something about the ending that still works as a horror sequence.
'Troll 2' & the Nature of So-Bad-They're-Good Movies
So what went right? Or wrong, seeing as nothing else was communicated in a truly scary fashion before Troll 2's abrupt ending; nothing else really felt like a functional horror movie. It creates the impression that the final scene of Troll 2 may have been a fluke. For whatever reason, the filmmakers, actors, and everyone else involved couldn't quite make something scary happen in any other scene. But the stars must've aligned, and for a brief, shining moment, Troll 2 became a horror movie... right before the end credits rolled. But if one fluke in an otherwise terrible movie still means the movie is terrible, how should people judge good movies that might only be good because they were lucky enough to fluke multiple scenes?
Unintentional hilarity might be what people get the most out of Troll 2, but perhaps the final scene was an example of unintentional horror, given the rest of it seems so incompetently made. And so if a troubled production has better luck, or a few good scenes that lift it out of "bad movie" territory by way of fortunate flukes, are they similarly worth being shunned as bad movies, as Troll 2's been? Maybe it should be acknowledged more openly that the line gets blurred when movies have things that work and things that don't, and ultimately, 99% of movies have identifiable good and bad elements. Troll 2 just happens to be mostly bad, but that ending is kind of good. If a few more scenes had been good, maybe Troll 2 would have a different reputation. And even if it qualifies as "so-bad-it's-good," maybe the most important thing - at the end of the day - is how entertaining a movie is, regardless of how much it succeeds, fails, or flukes its way to greatness and memorability. And Troll 2, without a doubt, is entertaining.
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