"Mountain Ghoul" (Troll) is the latest production of Norwegian cinema, which began at the beginning of the twentieth century, and reached a state of maturity after World War II thanks to great directors, including Arne Skwens, whose film "Nine Lives" (Ni liv) was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1957. Norwegian cinema has so far presented nearly 3,000 films, most of which imitated the Hollywood model.

Despite the purely Norwegian theme in the film written and directed by Roar Uthog, and it is currently shown on Netflix, there are shadows of beings and concerns that go beyond Norway culturally and intellectually, as the ghoul appears closer to the famous gorilla King Kong, about which he presented many films starting in 1933 as a monstrous mythical being, The ghoul also approaches Godzilla, the Japanese mythical monster that was introduced in 1954 for the first time by director Ichiro Honda in a movie of the same name. The mountain ghoul enjoys those qualities that were attributed to the two previous monsters, namely naivety, a merciful heart, and resorting to violence after exhausting the means of peace.

national heritage

The author and director of the film goes back in time about two thousand years, to reformulate the imaginary folk tales of the region before the entry of Christianity into the country, which sees that the mountains are not just “inanimate objects” formed from rocks and dirt covered with a layer of ice, but rather a very large living creature called “the mountain ghoul.” .

And Othog was able to travel back in time back to our days with the fairy tale, to make his fictional monster wake up to the massive explosions of the famous Mount Dover in order to build a railway.

And the sleeping ogre wakes up a thousand years ago, angry, to try to reach the capital, Stockholm, which poses a danger to the Norwegian state itself, as it destroys everything it finds on its way.

The director and writer presents the story of his film through the father, Tobias Tiedemann (actor Jared Eidsvold), who teaches his teenage daughter Nora Tiedemann (actress In Marie Wellman) that mountains are not just inanimate objects but living beings, and when she refuses to believe the matter, he admits to her the most important condition that makes her able to see Those faces, which is “faith,” meaning that if you believe in their existence, you will see them.

The girl begins to fulfill the condition, and gradually sees the faces of the mountain beasts.

The film's narration jumps about 20 years to find the teenage girl who has turned into a distinguished researcher in fossils, while the father lost his academic degree and was deposited in a mental institution, and then went out to live alone with paranoia, and he was expelled by the scientific community because of his belief in the existence of the "mountain ogre" so that his daughter broke off her relationship with it.

The daughter is surprised by a military plane that asks her immediately to meet the officials, in order to discuss a serious issue, which is an attack by an unknown person that led to widespread destruction in the railway construction area in the Dover Valley.

And the distinguished researcher discovers - through the video files related to the attack - that the attacker has two feet, two hands, a head and a face, and that he is very similar to the "mountain ogre" that her father told about.

A team is formed to confront the monster that conventional weapons fail to confront, so that the representatives of the authority decide to bomb it with a nuclear weapon, which causes great terror to the researcher and her father, who joined the work team.

The big question was: Why would the Beast want access to the capital?

The daughter and her father answer the question, confirming that the skeleton of the great-grandfather of this monster was placed under the king's palace, and he is seeking to obtain it.

The researcher discovers that the sound of church bells and sunlight are among the weapons that affect the monster, not nuclear weapons.

Dramatic teen

The script of the film was unable to transform his thoughts into people, so the work came as a set of references to issues through characters that were not built properly.

There are references to the seriousness of what they call "nature's wrath" as a result of the attack on forests and mountains by man, which is important and legitimate in light of the danger posed by climate change. And for human life, but the crisis in the work is related to the narrative structure that did not provide an integrated story for the researcher's family, and did not satisfy the viewer's curiosity about it.

But the most strange thing is the method of the researcher, who was introduced to a meeting that includes the most important minds and leaders in the country, including politicians, soldiers, and scholars, so she dealt with them with the utmost arrogance and considered them fools.

The film presented the King of Norway as completely absent from the reality of his country, while the emergency was declared in the country and the news screens reported throughout the day news of the beast, its destruction of everything in its path and the screens showed its image, the reader discovers that the king himself knows the beast and knows the secret of his anger, but he did not take any action To stop him only after the researcher and her team stormed his palace.

And the work makers gave the mountain ghoul a clear human characteristic, for although it attacked a public park and destroyed everything it found in its path, it was attacked by air, so it picked up the planes like grapes and threw them to turn each of them into a flame of fire, but he saved a child standing in the middle of the park.

After a short time, the mountain ghoul killed the researcher's father without dramatic necessity, although he was the only one who believed in him, and prompted everyone to believe in him later, which is an indication of the mountain ghoul's inability to distinguish in a state of anger, as it belongs to the forces of nature.

Unfinished romantic stories

The team to confront the ghoul included the military commander Christopher Holm (actor Mads Sigurd Petersen) as well as one of the advisers to the Prime Minister (actor Kim Falk).

The first presented an equivalent of the symbolism of the ideal lover, and his relationship with the researcher took a path that the viewer could expect to culminate in marriage. On the other side, the literature-loving prime minister's advisor came, to present a dose of comedy that slightly alleviates the atmosphere of destruction.

And because he is also a writer, the creators of the work pushed the viewer to expect more in the relationship between him and the researcher, but the matter ended at this point.

Despite the team's success in confronting the monster with the least possible losses, most of the action figures - especially those working in the Norwegian government and military forces - came more like caricatures in terms of exaggeration in performance, as well as dialogue that is difficult to relate to what can be heard in reality.