The Wasteland Reviewer

Troll 2 (2025) Written Review

Who doesn’t love movies about giant monsters? The “Kaiju” picture has become so popular again recently with two different Godzilla franchises going on at the same time with this Legendary Pictures shared monster universe getting tons of attention. But the United States and Japan don’t have to have the ownership of giant creature features. Looking over at Norway, they made a splash on Netflix with the film Troll. Giant, ugly humanoids attacking Northern Europe is quite a fun idea. That is what made this unexpected hit so a smash over on the #1 streaming service. But with such a successful launch on streaming, it is not surprising to find out that there was another one in the pipeline. But the big news is this big monster franchise is back with Troll 2. 

Does Roar Uthaug deliver yet another fun and thrilling film? Troll 2 is certainly a step down from the first film but there is still some fun to be had with this sequel. First off, the trolls of the film work perfectly. The scale is felt and is quite impressive. The effects for them are so good in capturing the gritty and earthy details of their design. The effects are quite realistic, and these giant creatures are quite grotesquely effective. The action is thrilling when it gets its chances to shine. Uthaug truly understands the scale and never makes this story feel less epic than it should. There are some solid emotional moments as well which give the film a bit of a heart. But the pacing of this 105-minute film is a bit clunky. There are long stretches of this film that focus so much on exposition and lore-building that it screeches to a halt. This film is just too uneven to offer up a consistently entreating creature feature. 

How does the story grab you this time around? Speaking about exposition, there are so many lore-building elements in this film that it makes up a decent chunk of the screenplay. When you have so much lore, it can be overwhelming and become too much of the focus of the film. For Troll 2, this film gets lost too often in the weeds when you realize you have a vengeful troll who hates humanity going toe-to-toe with another troll with a good connection to humans. That is not a ton to get caught up with. This is quite a simple scenario and unfortunately, not enough of the runtime is dedicated to letting this film speak for itself. There are also plenty of moving pieces on the human end of things which are too convoluted and that take away from the overall experience. Nora, Andreas, and Kris return from the first film with some added elements to their characters which gives them some added empathy along the way. When you strip away a lot of the noise, Troll 2 is still a fun story about two giant trolls fighting…which is appreciated. 

Does this cast add much to the proceedings? This might seem like an odd place to start but the presentation of these giant trolls is quite impressive. They are expressive and have distinct personalities, making them some solid characters along with the human actors. Ine Marie Wilmann is a rock-solid protagonist who gives Nora some solid personality and plenty of empathy. Kim Falck is the biggest personality amongst the human characters with his quirks which cut the tension at times. Mads Sjogard Pettersen does his best Josh Duhamel (Circa Transformers) with this military guy who has some solid presence along the way. There is some good chemistry between Wilmann and Pettersen as well. Sara Khorami brings a bit of an antagonistic and sassy presence to shake up the human scenes a bit. But overall, this is not a kaiju film that gives you big dynamic characters even though the film focuses a lot of time on them. 

Does Netflix have a good sequel on their hands with Troll 2? This is a fun and thrilling film when it focuses on the trolls. The action and effects truly deliver for this sequel. The characters are not the most dynamic and the exposition is just too robust, but they do add some layers to the experience at least. This is an engaging enough and fun enough experience to have over on streaming.