Review | Netflix movie review: Troll – Tomb Raider director’s Norway-set monster film is competently made but frustrating
- Troll looks the part, with great effects and action scenes, but seems most interested in emulating Hollywood blockbusters such as Jurassic Park and Godzilla
- There’s a frustrating lack of focus on Scandinavia’s fascinating and unique folklore, which leaves Roar Uthaug’s movie feeling derivative and unexceptional
3/5 stars
Ine Marie Wilmann stars as a renegade palaeontologist who must convince the government that the country’s capital, Oslo, is under threat from a mythological giant.
While the effects work is first-rate and the action efficiently handled, there is a frustrating lack of Scandinavian specificity on display, with Uthaug more eager to emulate blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Godzilla than introduce international viewers to his homeland’s unique folkloric threats.
When construction of a railway tunnel through Norway’s Dovre Mountains awakens a mysterious destructive force, prime minister Moberg (Anneke von der Lippe) is told that the damage may be the result of seismic activity or even some form of terrorist attack.
However, a series of bizarre indentations in the earth resembling giant footprints prompts her to turn instead to the expertise of palaeontologist Nora Tidemann (Wilmann), only for the scientist’s hypothesis to fall on deaf ears.