Troll

I remember exactly where I was when I first hit play on Troll: hunched over my laptop, trying to fish a single, salt-covered piece of black licorice out of the abyss between my sofa cushions. I never did find that licorice, but I did find a movie that understands exactly what it wants to be. Released directly to Netflix in late 2022, Roar Uthaug’s Troll arrived at a curious time for the industry—a moment when streaming giants were throwing "blockbuster" budgets at international creators to see if they could replicate the Hollywood formula in their own backyards.

A Mountain with a Grudge

If you’ve seen a Godzilla movie or the 2005 King Kong, you already know the skeleton of this story. There’s an explosion in the Dovre mountains during a tunnel project, a mysterious footprint, and a government that refuses to believe in fairy tales until a giant rock-monster starts punting their tanks into the fjord. Enter Nora Tidemann (Ine Marie Wilmann, who brought such grounded grit to Sonja: The White Swan), a paleontologist who hasn’t spoken to her "crazy" folklore-obsessed father (Gard B. Eidsvold) in years.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the "discredited scientist who is actually right" trope, and Roar Uthaug—the man who gave us the genuinely terrifying Norwegian disaster flick The Wave—knows how to play these beats like a fiddle. The film doesn't waste time trying to be a deep deconstruction of the genre. Instead, it leans into the contemporary "streaming spectacle" vibe: it looks expensive, moves fast, and proudly wears its 'diet Jurassic Park' influences on its sleeve.

Stomping Through the Folklore

The action choreography here is where the film earns its keep. Unlike some of the muddy, dimly lit CGI messes we’ve seen in recent superhero outings, the creature design in Troll is genuinely inspired. The troll looks like a sentient landslide with a face only a geologist could love. There’s a specific sequence where the creature blends into the mountainside that I found particularly clever—a reminder that CGI works best when it actually interacts with the geography instead of just floating in front of it.

As the troll makes its way toward Oslo, the scale of the destruction escalates in a way that feels physical. Uthaug and his cinematographer Jallo Faber (who worked on the stylish Pioneer) use the vast, sweeping Norwegian landscapes to make the creature feel ancient rather than just "alien." There’s a weight to the way the troll moves; you can almost feel the property values in Oslo plummeting with every thunderous step. However, I did find myself wishing the script by Espen Aukan took a few more risks. It hits every expected beat—the skeptical military general (Fridtjov Såheim), the quirky tech assistant (Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen), and the "we must protect nature" realization—with such precision that it occasionally feels like it was written by a very talented algorithm.

Streaming Big or Staying Home?

In the context of the current era, Troll is a fascinating artifact of the "International Blockbuster" boom. It’s a film that would have likely struggled to find a massive theatrical audience in the U.S. outside of the subtitles-and-chill crowd, yet it became a massive global hit for Netflix. It represents the democratization of the "Big Monster" genre; you don't need a Burbank studio lot to make a mountain move anymore.

Interestingly, Roar Uthaug had been sitting on this idea for nearly twenty years before the technology and the funding finally aligned. You can feel that pent-up energy in the set pieces. While some critics at the time complained about the "Americanization" of Norwegian folklore, I think that’s being a bit too precious. Cinema is a conversation, and Troll is just Norway talking back to Steven Spielberg in his own language. It’s a popcorn flick, through and through, designed to be watched on a big screen with the sound turned up high enough to annoy your neighbors.

The film does grapple slightly with "franchise fatigue" logic by teasing a wider world of myths, but it stays focused enough on Nora’s relationship with her father to keep the heart beating. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel; it’s just trying to run you over with a wheel the size of a cathedral. For a Friday night on the couch, that’s usually exactly what I’m looking for.

Ultimately, Troll is a sturdy, well-engineered piece of entertainment that proves you can transplant the "Kaiju" DNA into any culture and still get a thrill. It lacks the weird, idiosyncratic magic of something like Trollhunter (2010), but it makes up for it with sheer scale and a lead performance by Ine Marie Wilmann that keeps things from floating away into total absurdity. It’s a film that knows its place in the streaming ecosystem: it’s fun, it’s loud, and it’s over before it wears out its welcome. Just keep an eye on your licorice while you watch.