Troll 2 ✦ <TRUSTED>

I have seen Eraserhead . I have seen The Holy Mountain . I have never been as confused as I was during the scene where a grandpa ghost shows up to hand Joshua a bologna sandwich as a weapon. What makes Troll 2 legendary isn’t just one flaw—it’s a perfect storm of three.

Let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate: There are no trolls in Troll 2 . troll 2

Five stars. Zero quality. Infinite joy.

If you’ve never heard of Troll 2 , you’re probably wondering why a 35-year-old Italian B-movie (filmed in Utah with an American cast) still haunts the cultural periphery. The answer is simple: It is the Citizen Kane of bad movies. It is not merely "so bad it’s good." It is so aggressively, sincerely, and spectacularly wrong that it loops all the way back around to genius. A wholesome American family, the Waits, swaps houses with a creepy family in the rural town of Nilbog ("Goblin" spelled backwards—yes, the film has to point this out to you). Young Joshua has a vision: the town’s cheerful inhabitants are actually goblins, led by the seductive witch Creedence. Their plan? To feed the family "magic" green slop that will turn them into vegetables (celery, specifically) so the goblins can eat them. I have seen Eraserhead

There are goblins. Vegan goblins, to be precise. And that absurd contradiction—a monster movie without its title monster, featuring villains who want to turn people into plants so they don’t have to eat meat—is the perfect gateway into the beautiful, baffling chaos that is Claudio Fragasso’s 1990 masterpiece of incompetence. What makes Troll 2 legendary isn’t just one

Claudio Fragasso actually thought he was making a terrifying horror film. He wanted to criticize vegetarianism and American consumerism. He wanted to scare children. The fact that he created a slapstick comedy about haunted corn and magical cold cuts is not irony—it’s alchemy. His utter sincerity is the fuel that makes the fire burn so bright. Troll 2 doesn’t get the "Worst Movie Ever" crown from me as an insult. It is a celebration. In an era of polished, focus-grouped, algorithm-approved blockbusters, Troll 2 is a beautiful, screaming reminder that someone, somewhere, had a vision. That vision was broken, badly executed, and completely insane—but it was a vision .

Watch it alone, and you’ll laugh. Watch it with friends, and you’ll create a religion. Watch it stoned at 2 AM, and you might just see the face of God (who looks suspiciously like a goblin in a rubber mask holding a corncob).