‘We’re going to need more wallpaper” turns out to be the Nordic answer to “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, after a 50-metre troll has just swept a leg through someone’s soon-to-be-renovated house. When the quips revolve around interior design, you know Norwegian big-budget film-making is taking a softer path than its raucous American inspirations.
This is a Netflix sequel to Norwegian horror comedy Troll with the original director Roar Uthaug returning, and home is clearly a theme dear to the franchise’s heart. The first film’s Scandi-kaiju was returning to its roots, on a mission to trash Oslo. But the new “megatroll” – looking like Danny McBride in the throes of a full-body fungal infection – is headed for Trondheim, bent on revenging itself on the nation’s founding father and chief troll-scourge, King Olaf. Trollogist Nora (Ine Marie Wilmann) and ministerial adviser Andreas (Kim Falck) return, again trying to hold the authorities back from simply lighting up the enraged behemoth after it escapes from a government black site.
With much talk of the country’s Christian forefathers imposing uniformity by wiping out the trolls, Uthaug may be implying some rottenness in the state of present-day Norway. The cast is pointedly diverse too, with Sara Khorami joining as a scientist. But if Troll 2 is some kind of allegory for immigration or multiculturalism, then it wears it lightly. Widescreen mayhem is the main preoccupation here, the highlight being when the marauder peels open the top of a nightclub and helps himself to apres-ski amuse-bouches.
The problem though, is that Troll 2 wears everything lightly. It flits between elements of Spielbergian wonderment, Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunt, and Arrival-style communication with alien entities, without majoring in any of them. The characterisation is token (Nora expeditiously switches from troll-whisperer to firing on them with holy water-filled grenades), and the quip embellishment is weak. Norse mythology is an atypical starting point for monster movies, but deploying it as rotely as this, the film has little chance of standing out from the mockbuster wallpaper.
