Netflix keeps delivering surprises, turning unexpected picks into sudden favorites. The latest hit is The Troll, a Norwegian spectacle featuring a towering, digitally rendered giant troll. Standing 40 to 50 meters tall and echoing the vibe of King Kong and Godzilla, the creature dominates the screen. The film boasts no well-known leads, and director Roar Uthaug, who previously guided Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander, brings a lean, mythic energy to the story. The special effects impress, even if they don’t reach Hollywood’s peak, and the film’s immersive world has clearly catapulted it to Netflix’s top ranks.
Debuted on December 1, it has logged an impressive viewing time, with roughly 128 million hours watched so far in Spain. Last Tuesday it ranked as the platform’s third most-watched movie; two days later it slipped to seventh but remained within the top ten, a sign of its durable popularity. Troll has become one of the most widely watched foreign films on Netflix and sits among the top ten in 93 countries around the world.
Netflix tracks this popularity during the movie s first 28 days of release, and with almost two weeks left in that window, Troll appears poised to keep breaking records. The streamer has also dazzled audiences with Bloody Red Sky, a German production blending vampire lore with themes of modern extremism. Since its streaming debut in July 2021, the film has racked up about 110 million hours of viewing time.
norwegian folklore
The plot feels familiar in a universal sense, especially for fans of big screen monsters. If you have seen Godzilla, Jurassic Park, or King Kong, Troll follows a familiar arc, but it is the ties to Norwegian folklore that give the film its extra spark. There are no DNA-engineered dinosaurs here; instead, the story leans into old myths and ancestral folklore to deepen the sense of place. The adventure begins when a father and daughter climber team reaches a summit that reveals the sweeping Trolltindane mountains. This range, rising about 1,700 meters above the valley, draws climbers from around the world, yet in the film the mountains carry a magical, ominous charge. The father, a dialect and folklore teacher, guides his daughter to trust her imagination as she peers into the cliff faces and sees the quiet, carved faces of trolls staring back.
Two decades later, Nora Tideman has become a renowned paleobiologist who is summoned by the Norwegian government after a startling event. On the Dovre plateau, another central range, a colossal creature emerges from the earth as the mountains are leveled to make room for rail construction. Protests erupt with cries of reverence for the land, and ecological concerns mingle with Norse mythic history: the fall of the troll dynasty coincides with the Christian era that reshaped the region. The awakening stone and moss giant roars to life, and the consequences ripple across Norway. Nora works to counter the menace and safeguard the legends that ground the country s cultural memory, all while the monster tears across landscapes with unstoppable force. This setup helps explain why Troll has captured audiences and held their attention in recent times.
The collision of ancient myth and modern catastrophe drives the tension. The roar of the giant disrupts cities, as Oslo becomes a backdrop for the struggle to contain the threat and preserve a fragile sense of myth in a rapidly changing world. Troll continues to pack theaters of the mind and on screens, reinforcing Netflix s reputation for turning regional tales into global conversations.