Building a tunnel through some Norwegian mountain, the fools done delved too greedily and too deep and woke up a hundred-and-fifty-foot-tall troll right out of Nordic folklore. What ensues is basically a Kaiju movie, with many of the classic Kaiju tropes, but unfortunately a whole lot of Ronald Emmerich-isms, too. Oh well.
Our protagonist Nora (Ine Marie Wilmann) is first shown as a teen, as her father Tobias (Gard Eidsvold) regales her with troll legends. Twenty years later she's a successful paleontologist (of the sort that magically knows where bones are buried, finding a whole T-Rex skull as if it ain't no thang), and is contracted as an expert to figure out just what burst out of that tunnel.
As is usual in this sort of film, she's the only one who can make out the troll in a blurry film taken at the site (using the arcane arts of rewind and pause). She doesn't want to admit to herself what it is, but she convinces the government to go pick her estranged dad up, whom we learn believed in trolls too damn hard and became some sort of Troll conspiracy theorist; a classic Emmerich touch which rarely adds anything worthwhile to any of his movies; Here, at the hands of someone who isn't a complete hack, it mixes in some likeable melodrama as the father/daughter relationship is repaired. In case you're wondering, yes, he turns out to be correct about everything despite being portrayed as a complete kook. The Emmerich is strong in this one.
Nora soon gathers a group of like-minded individuals around her - an aide to the PM (Kim Falck) and a military captain (Mads Pettersen) who breaks protocol for them and accrues enough faults during the film for a court martial and umpteen dishonorable discharges, but who's counting? Not the movie, that's for sure; it later has a general basically give the thumbs up to high treason.
The ragtag group watches on as the troll wades through ineffective military attacks, put together a hilariously daft plan (that almost works!), get fired from the government commission to stop the menace, and then go at it on their lonesome... There are no worthwhile surprises at any point as the script follows the standard Hollywood playbook for this sort of thing pretty damn close, including a stirring speech at a last stand, a government cover-up, a stupid and counterproductive plan from the powers-that-be, a crowd-pleasing stick it to the man moment, etc. etc. A whole mess of dumb, populist bullshit.
It's kind of fun, for a while at least, and it looks pretty good with crisp cinematography, pretty clear action, and thankfully, good use of the sheer scale of the big bad. The Norwegian landscapes and folklore, great effects work, game performances, and the sheer batshit craziness of the premise almost give this enough energy to make it worthwhile... but by the third act an accumulation of weapons-grade stupid bring it crashing down to the ground (among many other things, you can bet that it steals and uses the "hackers are magic" chestnut from Hollywood).
But even before that point it's hard to shake the feeling of a sort of compound deja-vu, that you've seen this movie several times before. Not necessarily better done, but not worse enough as to validate this one.
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