When I first heard Netflix was making a sequel to Troll I immediately thought of 1990's Troll 2. One of the worst movies of all time (with 5% on Rotten Tomatoes) and a cult classic for those who love 'so bad it's good' films. Why should Netflix waste time and money on something with almost no artistic merit?
Luckily this is a sequel to 2022's Troll instead, an unrelated and much much better movie. One of the best things about streaming services is how they break down international barriers to provide the best entertainment regardless of origin. Without streaming many of us would never have heard of this Norweigan Godzilla-style movie.
The story revolves around a cryptid-style creature, a giant troll rumoured to live in the Norweigan mountains. Considering it was a straight-to-streaming movie, the CGI is impressive with the titular Troll less a waiting-under-a-bridge type and more a 150-foot-tall kaiju.
It was well received with an 89% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and became Netflix's most-watched foreign language movie of all time (of course, Squid Game is a series). Popular and critically praised? Sounds like a good excuse for a sequel to me.
Writer and director Roar Uthaug has been confirmed to return for the second instalment and with the original leaving plenty of scope for more, consider us excited. We will likely have to wait a while to see it, however, with Variety claiming filming won't start until 2024. Perhaps we'll just have to play the PlayStation classic Shadow of the Colossus in the meantime.
In the wake of the writers and actors strikes, content has been harder to come by recently but Netflix looking outside of Hollywood for projects like this is one solution. It has also recently purchased the rights to Richard Linklater's new movie Hit Man which premiered at the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews with 98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
