Cannibal Troll (2021)
Directed by Scott Jeffrey
I was talking to my wife about the movies I watched recently and Cannibal Troll came up, without missing a beat she said, “Oh so he’s a troll who eats other trolls?” That sounds interesting to me, a horror movie where all the characters are trolls and there’s one particularly evil one who targets the other trolls, like a fantasy Hannibal Lecter, but sadly no, that is not the case. Not only does the Troll in Cannibal Troll never eat another troll, we never even get confirmation that he even eats people. It’s implied in a few scenes but never outright stated, which is really strange but it’s just one minor fraction of what makes Cannibal Troll such a bizarre movie. Cannibal Troll opens the way all great horror movies do, by immediately showing the villain, explaining what the villain’s shtick is, showing us all his lovely cottage in the woods, and then introducing us to a character who knows exactly what’s happening and exactly how to defeat the troll but who never acts on this knowledge.That all happens in the first scene of the movie and I can already feel my mind breaking just trying to explain this movie and I haven’t even made it to the premise yet!
A group of young women head out to the woods for a fun camping trip for the main gal’s ‘hen-do’, British for Bachelorette Party, when they encounter a suspicious priest in a church in the middle of nowhere, who knows exactly what is going on but refuses to give details other than standard vague horror movie warnings, before heading out on their hiking trip. Let me break this group down for you, the bride to be is going on a camping/hiking trip with; her own mother, a friend who is heavily pregnant, her best friend who is secretly in love with her (spoilers), and then some people who have no characters and don’t matter. You’re probably thinking that this group is ready for some character drama, right? WRONG. There are exactly two scenes where ANY character drama happens, two scenes where stuff matters and people talk about it. What is in this movie you may ask? Running. Running in the woods. Running from a troll. Running to go back to the troll’s cottage to get keys. Running while the troll is shooting arrows at them, arrows that clearly don’t have arrowheads on them but still kill people by the way, running while the troll slowly chases them.
While they’re running there is also a ton of dialogue, but none of it ever matters even slightly. Plot points are brought up and then never explained, the troll’s motivations get discussed but never get confirmed or even elaborated on, so this mythology is built around the troll that you would never learn from the movie without someone explaining it to you. We never learn where the other trolls are or if there is only one troll or if the other trolls are just living somewhere else. This is the part that makes the movie shine for me. If it was only running, then I would be bored the whole time, but because the actual plot of the movie is getting shuffled around, my constant confusion kept me engaged. I desperately wanted answers. I wanted to know why, but Cannibal Troll refused to explain anything to me, and I kind of admire that. Others probably won’t get much out of Cannibal Troll, but it stubbornly refuses to act like a real movie, and that’s kind of charming in a weird way.
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