Norway gets its rocks off again.
Roar Uthaug’s Troll succeeded because it treated its mythological subject with a specific, granular gravity. It borrowed the grammar of the disaster movie and applied it to a tale that felt transcribed from the pages of Norwegian folklore, resulting in a film that was as much about national identity as it was about smashing landmarks. Three years later, Troll 2 arrives on Netflix with a larger budget and a clear intent to compete directly with Hollywood on its own turf. The result is a sequel that is undeniably spectacular and entertaining, by trading the eerie, moss-covered atmosphere of its predecessor for the polished, kinetic language of the American franchise blockbuster.
The narrative trajectory here is familiar to anyone who has tracked the evolution of Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse. We find Ine Marie Wilmann’s Nora Tidemann living in isolation, a trope seemingly mandated for all cinematic experts in giant biology, before she is pulled back into the fray by Kim Falck’s Andreas Isaksen. The threat this time has doubled; there is no longer a single, lonely entity waking up on the wrong side of the continental shelf, but a conflict between ancient rivals. Where the first film felt like a localized event, this feels like a geological wrestling match staged for a global audience.
This Americanisation of the narrative DNA is perhaps most obvious in the film’s handling of the government response. Gone is the flustered, committee-driven bureaucracy that gave the original its distinctively European texture. In its place, we find a high-tech paramilitary operation that seems to have spent the intermission binge-watching Michael Bay movies. When the characters descend into a subterranean containment facility to visit a dormant giant kept on ice, the visual parallel to Transformer’s Hoover Dam holding cell is so precise it borders on infringement. It is a slick sequence but by the time a trembling technician refers to the frozen captive as “Megatroll,” the film has essentially winked at the audience and admitted it is playing with borrowed toys.
The original Troll maintained a sense of melancholy awe regarding the beast; it was a force of nature, unknowable and unstoppable but Troll 2 is eager to humanise. The script, again by Espen Aukan, introduces a dynamic that mirrors the Godzilla x Kong relationship, positioning one creature as a benevolent protector and the other as a world-ending threat. It allows for some truly impressive action sequences – the battle of Trondheim is rendered with a technical ferocity that rivals anything from ILM – but it robs the film of its unique, folktale horror. We are no longer watching a myth come to life; we are watching a superhero brawl where the combatants happen to be made of mountain.
Despite the shift in genre gears, the cast works hard to maintain a Nordic sensibility. Wilmann remains a compelling presence, refusing to play Nora as a generic action hero. She brings an intellectual energy to the role, treating the emergence of giant trolls as an environmental problem to be solved rather than just a target to be shot. Her chemistry with Falck is the film’s most reliable asset, providing a layer of human friction that prevents the CGI spectacle from becoming numbing. Falck, in particular, excels at undercutting the military bravado around him, reminding us that in the face of such scale, the only rational response is terrified confusion.
Uthaug’s direction remains robust. He has a keen eye for scale, framing his creatures against the dramatic verticality of the Norwegian landscape in a way that emphasises their mass. The visual integration of the trolls into the environment is seamless, and the sound design deserves special mention for giving the creatures a voice that feels like grinding tectonic plates rather than synthesised roars. Technically, the film is a triumph, proving that the gap between Hollywood and European production values has effectively closed.
Troll 2 is a successful sequel in the commercial sense. It is louder, faster, and significantly more aggressive than what came before. It delivers on the promise of monster-on-monster action with a confidence that will undoubtedly satisfy the Friday night streaming crowd. Yet, in reaching for the King Kong demographic – and unabashedly borrowing the containment protocols of the Decepticons – it has ablated the stranger edges that made the original so unique.
