Director: Claudio Fragasso
Cast: Michael Paul Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Jason Wright
Screenplay: Rossella Drudi, Claudio Fragasso
95 mins. Rated PG-13.

I remember almost getting a copy of Troll 2 on DVD. I remember having the movie in my basket, the last copy in the store, and a friend of mine took the film out of my basket and bought it before I realized. I was pissed. It took another two years for the film to finally enter my possession (a gift from that friend who ordered me a copy as payback), and it still took a number of years to finally see Troll 2…and it was absolutely terrible, but I don’t know that I appreciated just how terrible it was at the time. Now, I’ve watched the film a second time, and I’m ready to admit that it’s absolutely terrible, and I kind of loved that.

Completely unrelated to the original, Troll 2 follows the Waits family as they swap homes with another small-town family for the week and end up in the small town of Nilbog. Things seem strange from the outset, but young Joshua Waits (Michael Paul Stephenson, Beyond Darkness, The Paper Brigade), who gets messages from his dead grandfather, begins to unravel the mysteries of Nilbog, learning that the town is inhabited, not by Trolls, but by Goblins, and these creatures have plans to turn the Waits family into delicious green goo.

There’s no getting around Troll 2’s legend. The movie features a cast of people who were trying to be extras in the film and ended up as the leads. It was originally a screenplay called Goblin with some of the most atrocious dialogue I’ve ever seen. The plot is occasionally nonsensical and often unusual to an extreme degree. And yet…

Troll 2 has this following that some of the “Worst Movies Of All Time” have acquired. On the surface, the movie is terrible, but I believe what makes it so beloved as a bad movie is that, while the the talent was certainly lacking, the heart was not. Everyone involved in this film was putting the effort and care into it, and that, more than anything else, is visible onscreen. We can sit here all day and discuss the various elements of Troll 2 that make it so bad, but I’ve seen the film twice now, and for all the bad, I had so much film watching it. Similar to films like Birdemic and The Room, Troll 2 was a labor of love. Director Claudio Fragasso (Rats: Night of Terror) imbued the film with his critiques on the way we eat, the way we interact, and the way we view life and death. If none of that gets across to you, then that’s okay, too. Troll 2 transcends bad films and becomes something wholly different.

So what makes the Worst Movie Ever Made? Is Troll 2 the Worst Film if people love it so much? Is that title an endearing one, and should it be? All these years as a fan of both great and bad movies, I still don’t have the answers, perhaps because the answers don’t exist. As it stands, Troll 2 is a bad movie. For me, it isn’t the Worst Movie Ever Made? It couldn’t be, because I get so much joy from it. Where to we go from here? It’s a Great Bad Movie.

1.5/5
(6/5 for heart and entertainment)
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of John Carl Buechler’s Troll, click here.