Netflix’s international offerings include some entertaining Norwegian fare, such as the series Ragnarok (2020–2023), a surprisingly engaging reworking of Norse mythology brought into the 21st century that ran for three seasons. Another enjoyable offering was a 2022 monster movie called Troll, essentially a Norwegian take on the classic Godzilla formula. Netflix just dropped a trailer for the sequel, Troll 2, which looks to be very much in the same vein as its predecessor.
(Spoilers for the first Troll movie below.)
Don’t confuse the Netflix franchise with 2010’s Trollhunter, shot in the style of a found footage mockumentary. A group of college students sets off into the wilds of the fjordland to make a documentary about a suspected bear poacher named Hans. They discover that Hans is actually hunting down trolls and decide to document those endeavors instead, but soon realize they are very much out of their depth.
Writer/director André Øvredal infused Trollhunter with the driest of wit and myriad references to Norwegian culture, especially its folklore and fairy tales surrounding trolls. There are woodland trolls and mountain trolls, some with tails, some with multiple heads. They turn to stone when exposed to sunlight—which is why one of the troll hunters carries around a powerful UV lamp—and mostly eat rocks but can develop a taste for human flesh, and they can smell the blood of a Christian.
Directed by Roar Uthaug, the first Troll film is based on the same mythology. It had great action sequences and special effects and didn’t take itself too seriously. A young girl named Nora grows up with the mythology of Norwegian trolls turned to stone buried in the local mountains. An adult Nora (Ine Marie Wilmann), now a paleontologist, teams up with a government advisor, Andreas (Kim S. Falck-Jørgensen), and a military captain, Kris (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen), to take out a troll that has been rampaging across Norway, charting a path of destruction toward the heavily populated city of Oslo.
