The Best Awful

By Krista Thom
Contributing Writer

There are some claims that just need to be investigated. Like when your friend tells you that he can eat 19 boxes of Junior Mints, including the boxes, in two hours. Or when the instruction manual tells you not to stick a fork into a working toaster.

I heard that Troll 2 was the worst movie ever made, so when the Fargo Theatre decided to show it as one of their Midnight Movies, I had to go see if it was true.

I’ve seen my share of bad movies, and I have to admit, I didn’t think that any movie could be so bad that it could objectively be called the worst. Oh me of little faith! After seeing Troll 2 I cannot doubt that it is, by any reasonable measure, the worst movie ever made.

Troll 2 is so bad, it messes up its own title. There are no trolls in this movie. Nor is Troll 2 a sequel to anything. (There was an original Troll movie, which came out a few years before Troll 2, but there is no connection between the two.)

It goes downhill from there. The opening sequence has Grandpa Seth reading a bedtime story to
his grandson, Joshua.

The story he selects is about an unfortunate character named Jonathan, who goes into the woods and is pursued by goblins. He meets a beautiful woman, with freckles that were apparently drawn with a sharpie, who offers him some magical food. He eats it, even though it looks like a mix of cool whip and lime jell-o. This makes green syrup start running down his face, and he discovers to his horror that he’s growing branches. Apparently the ruthless, bloodthirsty goblins are also vegetarians, and man-plants are their favorite food.

At one point, the kid interrupts his grandpa to correct him. “You said they CAN, grandpa,” he says, referring to the goblins, “you should have said they COULD. Otherwise, what kind of fairy tale is this?”

Good ol’ Grandpa Seth responds, with unnecessary enthusiasm, “They can! They CAN! Goblins still exist!”

By the way, we find out a few minutes later that Grandpa Seth died six months ago. I don’t know, if my dead grandpa came back to read me a bedtime story and tell me that monsters really exist, I think I’d be a little freaked out. But this is apparently just a day in the life for the kid.

We soon learn that the kid’s family is leaving the next morning to spend a month in the country. Apparently, they signed up for some sort of house exchange with a family they’ve never met. For me, that raises all sorts of red flags, but there are no brain surgeons in this family, if you catch my drift.

The family arrives in Nilbog. (The goblins don’t seem to be that sharp when it comes to thinking up code names. Fortunately for them, it doesn’t take much to outwit the Waits family.) After another visit from Grandpa Seth, the Waits arrive in town at about two o’clock in the afternoon, only to find Nilbog deserted. “Remember,” quips the dad, “this is the country. People around here go to bed early.”

By the way, the Waits family is followed into Nilbog by sister Holly’s boyfriend and his troop of friends. There is definitely something weird going on with these guys. Early in the movie, Holly explains that her family doesn’t approve of Eliot because he spends too much time with his friends. “What’s wrong with having friends?” asks a mystified Eliot (well, as mystified as he can be, considering that the whole cast seems to be devoid of genuine human emotions).

“Nothing,” replies Holly, “if you want to remain a virgin for the rest of your life! I know you take them to bed with you, and I do NOT believe in group sex!”

Is there a level on which that little interaction makes sense? If so, I can’t see it. But this is exactly the kind of engaging dialogue that makes Troll 2 what it is.

Anyway, the family goes to their new house, and meets the family they’re trading with. Any other family would have given up on the deal and gone home when they met this serious creeper family, but the Waits are not known for good decision-making skills.

They exchange keys, and watch the other family drive off. Inside, they discover a feast of green goblin crap, which to them looks delicious. Just as they’re about to tuck in, Grandpa Seth appears to little Joshua, and explains that he must prevent his family from eating.

I guess being dead imbues a person with super powers, because Grandpa Seth agrees to stop time for thirty seconds to give Joshua time to come up with a plan. He does indeed find a way to make the food unappetizing.

He pees on it. No, I’m really not kidding.

Meanwhile, Eliot and his friends are camped out somewhere in the woods in their beat-up RV. Unfortunately, they do not have a kindly dead grandpa to guide them, so they’re pretty much toast from the beginning.

Two of the guys get drawn into a freaky goblin church, where they meet the crazy druid-witch Creedence, whose job is to extend her screen time by drawing out her vowels and contorting her face into ever more unnatural expressions.

Seriously, though, Creedence is the one who makes all the crazy goblin food (by the way, you’d think that if she could make a potion to turn men into plants, she could figure out how to make it look a little more appealing).

She tricks one of the boys into drinking a magic potion (by saying, “Drink this!”), and turns them both into tasty snacks for her Cheeeldreeehn!!!

Back at the ranch, the townsfolk-goblins are having a party to welcome the Waits. Grandpa Seth comes to the rescue, again, by handing Joshua…a Molotov cocktail. Seriously, it’s worth seeing this movie just to see a kindly old man hand a powerful explosive to his grandson.

The leader of the goblins attempts to stop Joshua, and is stopped himself by a face full of gasoline. The rest of the family comes outside to find that, hey, there’s a burnt-up goblin corpse lying on the ground, and that’s not normal.

At that point, the game is pretty much up, and the only thing to do is run. There are some chase scenes and moments of hokey fighting before Joshua and Grandpa Seth figure out how to destroy the source of the goblins’ power. (They use the power of goodness, and a bologna sandwich.)

Even though it’s the worst movie ever made (or more accurately, because it’s the worst movie ever made), I found Troll 2 thoroughly enjoyable. I enjoyed it more than any bad movie I’d ever seen. I enjoyed it more than many good movies I’ve seen.

Perhaps some of that was the atmosphere – I watched this after midnight in an auditorium full of people, which is definitely how Troll 2 is meant to be viewed – but I also have to admit that it takes a certain amount of genius to make a movie that bad.

This is the only movie I know of where a character is buried under a steamy avalanche of popcorn. That sort of thing transcends lameness, and puts Troll 2 in a whole new category of bad.

I tell you that Troll 2 is the worst movie ever made. Now go out there and see if it isn’t true.

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