It’s easy to rag on Netflix for knocking out a succession of formulaic action thrillers that can always be relied on to do a turn on the viewership charts before fading into obscurity in no time at all, but the streaming service looks to be onto a winner with Norwegian creature feature Troll.
Not only does the fantasy epic from Tomb Raider reboot director Roar Uthaug currently hold a perfect 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes score at the time of writing, but it’s awoken from its long slumber to become a monster-sized smash hit in every corner of the globe.
As per FlixPatrol, since debuting yesterday, Troll has already become the number one most-watched feature in a gigantic 81 countries around the world, having instantly cracked the Top 10 in 89 total. That’s a hell of a return for a Scandinavian fantasy flick packing a budget that’s a fraction of Netflix’s typical effects-heavy offerings, with quality unsurprisingly the key.
Trapped for a thousand years, the titular creature of legend is suddenly raring to go after a millennia in stasis, laying waste to anything and everything in its path. As the troll begins to steamroll its way towards capital city Oslo, an intrepid band of heroes put their heads together in an effort to formulate a plan of stopping something they had no idea was even real until they’d seen it with their own eyes.
Netflix can spend $200 million on all the A-list Hollywood adventures it wants, but we’d much rather see more original content like Troll that puts a fantastically fresh spin on localized lore.