Hacker Cinema
Troll 2
1990 · Film · 95 min
Part of Troll (1986) Collection
Directed by Claudio Fragasso
When young Joshua learns that he will be going on vacation with his family to a small town called Nilbog, he protests adamantly. He is warned by the spirit of his deceased grandfather that goblins populate the town. His parents, Michael and Diana, dismiss his apprehensions, but soon learn to appreciate their son's warnings. Guided by his grandfather's ghost, will Joshua and his family stand a chance in fighting off these evil beings?
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3 comments on Hacker News
If we’re comparing bad quality to bad quality, human bad quality is infinitely more interesting. The fact someone wrote, directed, produced, acted in, etc, in something like Troll 2 or The Room is what makes those movies special. It’s the fact you can go “god damn, someone thought this was good” and be baffled at specific decisions they made. It’s the curiosity of “what was going on there”, “what drove those individuals to do this”, “how much of it were outside forces”, “who are these people”. It’s all the reasons which make it worth it to make a movie about a bad movie.
With AI, even if you enjoy it as bad, as soon as you know it’s AI it loses all interest because there’s zero story behind it. The answer to all those questions becomes “a statistical algorithm made it that way”, and that’s objectively a boring answer.
Yeah, maybe I should clarify; there are "good" and "bad" movies from a theoretical level. My enjoyment largely rests on how interesting I find them. Objectively terrible movies like "The Happening" or "The Room" or "Samurai Cop" or "Troll 2" or "Angry Red Planet" are "bad" because whomever made them seems to have no understanding of film-theory, or what it would take to make a "good" movie, but I find them endlessly entertaining...like watching a trainwreck
The irony of it is that if they had tried to make those moves "bad" on purpose, they wouldn't be interesting at all (at least not to me), and they would just be "bad" on every level for me.
In fact, even when there is sincerity, it's not a truly deterministic system. I think that the first Troll movie is technically objectively worse than Troll 2, but I find Troll 1 to be pretty boring, in addition to being incompetent, while Troll 2 is silly and an utter blast to watch.
Troll 2 used to be the worst-rated movie on IMDb until it became a cult favorite and garnered tons of 5-star ratings.
If you're interested, there's a really interesting documentary about Troll 2 called Best Worst Movie, which covers the film's production and cult following. After watching the documentary, Troll 2 becomes an enjoyable movie because you know all the crazy backstories to the actors and scenes.