Netflix Movie Review: Troll Tomb Raider Directors Norwayset Monster Film Is Competently Made But Frustrating

• Trolls looks good with great effects and action sets, but they seem more interested in emulating Hollywood blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Godzilla.
• There's a frustrating lack of focus on the fascinating and whimsical Scandinavian folklore that makes Rohr Uthaug's film feel contrived and repetitive.

3/5 stars

Norway's most recent wave effects-heavy disaster movies finally get their spin on Trolls in King Kong , the stylish but somewhat derivative film from The Wave director Roar Uthaug.

Ini Marie Willman stars as a rebel paleontologist who must convince the government that the country's capital, Oslo, is threatened by a mythical monster.

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While the effects work brilliantly and the action is expertly handled, the show lacks Scandinavian flair, with Uthaug more interested in emulating blockbusters like Jurassic Park and Godzilla than presenting the unique folkloric threats of his homeland. .

When construction of a railway tunnel through Norway's Dover Mountains awakens mysterious destructive forces, Prime Minister Moberg (Anneke von der Lippe) is informed that the damage could be the result of seismic activity or even some sort of terrorist attack.

However, a set of strange teeth in the ground that look like giant footprints prompts him to approach paleontologist Nora Tiedemann (Willman), only to derail the scientist's guess.

© South China Morning Post Guard b. Eidsvold provided troll photos as Tobias . Image: Netflix

Teaming up with Andreas (Kim Falk), a shady government official, Nora is forced to turn to her estranged father, Norwegian folklore professor Tobias Tiedemann (Gard B. Eidsvold), for help. He raised her to believe in trolls and other fairy-tale creatures, but his need for scientific truth has driven the couple apart ever since.

Uthaug, who co-wrote the screenplay for Troll with screenwriter Espen Aukan, is part of a group of tech-savvy, business-minded Nordic filmmakers who have burst onto the international scene over the past decade.

Like contemporaries like Tommy Wirkola ( Violent Night ) and Andre Overedal ( Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ), Uthaug has experience in Hollywood (he directed the 2018 Tomb Raider reboot), but is eager to return to his homeland. to make. Gender rates based on comparable technical levels.

© A photo of the troll courtesy of the South China Morning Post . Image: Netflix

The Wave (2015) is exactly the kind of post Irwin Allen-style disaster drama German director Roland Emmerich has been making for years. Its sequels The Quake (2018) and 2021's The Burning Sea (released in Hong Kong earlier this year as The North Sea ) continued the trend.

What's most disappointing about Trolls , a film in which a giant bottle-nosed thief roams Oslo sniffing out Christian victims, is how much it enlightens viewers about Norway's rich history of misunderstood and persecuted monsters.

Troll is streaming on Netflix.

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This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), one of the leading news outlets covering China and Asia.

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