Troll 2 (2025)
Directed by Roar Uthaug
When a dangerous new troll unleashes devastation across their homeland, Nora, Andreas and Major Kris embark on their most perilous mission yet.
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5 films that influenced Troll 2
What critics say influenced Troll 2
The film dives headfirst into a “Silence of the Lambs” cross-examination between Kelley and Göring, as the two match wits by trying to outsmart each other in a game of mental chess.
Imagine Judgment at Nuremberg refracted through Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter’s relationship in The Silence of the Lambs.
There’s a certain flavor of “Silence of the Lambs,” of course, with the German general as the super-intelligent locus of evil and the shrink as the somewhat naive innocent who thinks he can match wits with him.
There are definite similarities between the Göring-Kelley relationship and the one between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs—questions of morality and ethics, and intellectual power versus low animal cunning.
Hermann Göring was a flat-out monster, so scenes where the psychiatrist interacts with him should have an intense vibe similar to the Clarice Starling/Hannibal Lecter dynamic in The Silence of the Lambs.
Highlighting the banality of evil has become a trend in recent Holocaust dramas like The Zone of Interest. But unlike that film, Nuremberg relies on didactic expository dialogue.
…just as 2023’s The Zone of Interest depicted, Nuremberg captures how the Holocaust was not carried out by some supernatural evil but by everyday people so entrenched in their beliefs, ambition, and power that they committed horrific acts against their fellow human beings.
…while as an exploration of Nazi evils the film pales in comparison to Jonathan Glazer's masterwork The Zone of Interest (2023).
It’s unfair to make the comparison to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Still, Glazer’s film was willing to sit uncomfortably with evil long enough to dissect it without turning its characters into a sideshow of Hollywood tropes. The problem is that it’s not as accessible as Vanderbilt’s film. They share the intent of dissecting evil, but Glazer is much clearer about how he wants to approach it, while Vanderbilt strings together a few conceptually interesting ideas before sacrificing them all for a more generic absolute.
While the plot may not deliver the same emotional gut-punch as The Zone of Interest, it also explores the banality of evil, suggesting that horrific acts are committed not by some supernatural force, but by ‘ordinary people’ motivated by ambition and unchecked desire for power.
You also get a slight sense of post-Oppenheimer cinema in the pretty rapid pacing, and it’s to its credit that it doesn’t feel like too much of a heaving object despite a two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
Films like Oppenheimer, which Vanderbilt seems especially eager to replicate in terms of its active pacing, heavily descriptive writing and even the use of shared cast member Rami Malek, managed to earn its unlikely combination of epic filmmaking and stuffy exposition through engrossing technical aspects like its cinematography and editing.
At one point, it looked like Lila showed up conveniently to move the plot along. Arguably, this was worse than the part Albert Einstein magically appears to see Julius Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer.
Rami Malek, as seen in Oppenheimer…
…not quite reaching Oppenheimer level but still having several A-listers show up for little more than a cameo…
…the tongue-in-cheek reprise of Crowe in Gladiator leading his war criminals down the tunnel into the courtroom…
Crowe’s performance as Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command was solid, with dialogue and monologues reminiscent of Maximus in Gladiator.
Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe, Gladiator)…
The one-time Gladiator Maximus Decimus Meridius, reduced to cosplaying a bulging Nazi in his final days.
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It brings to mind similar stakes and logistical dilemmas journalists faced in Spotlight, where a group of characters must navigate their morals while doing what must be done.