Raindance Film Festival review – The Troll
A 67-minute feature directed, written, produced, edited by and starring Brianna Lee – who also gets credits for special effects, some extra voice-overs and a lot of other pitch-in-and-get-the-job-done jobs. Lee plays Killa B, an influencer-performer-idol with a gazillion followers and fans and a Barbie-perfect lifestyle. She starts the day by putting on smiley face slippers then putting on a smile – only she’s still haunted by the traumatic upbringing which inspired her reinvention as a rare net personality never to have slipped in public. But there are always haters and B is struck by hurtful comments (‘manly’, ‘ugliest girl on the internet’, ‘no one is watching you’) made by Josh (Greg Saridakis), a teenage clod in a small town who posts pretty ropey dancing in his bedroom videos.
In what must be every celebrity’s fantasy – Kevin Smith did something similar in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back – B tracks down Josh using her net sleuthing skills and starts dismantling his already fraying life, starting with his recovering alcoholic Mom (Alena Acker). It’s a reverse stalker movie, with the famous person homing in on the obscure offender. Lee hints at a torture porn outcome (yes, someone gets taped to a chair in an abandoned swimming pool at one point) without feeling the need to go entirely there. Lee is excellent as a human cartoon, showing moments of mental and physical fragility between her personae as aggressively up/cheery and eyes-narrowed maniacal/dangerous. Saridakis makes a credible troll, almost getting off the hook when B feels a spurt of empathy for his lot only to seal his fate with a typically teenage snort of derisive laughter.
The low budget shows at times, as when a school hall full of superfans is plainly just thirty or so crammed into seats at the front – but it’s highly wrought. The cuts to black leader are particularly effective. A strength is that it’s almost too easy to sympathise with Killa B – audiences are accustomed (or conditioned) to wanting to see even minorly obnoxious people suffer excessive punishment, so her personal vendetta just makes her a girly Punisher … and her speech of self-justification is heartfelt, though it is also neat to the point where we realise it’s a routine like any of B’s TikTok messages to her fans. Maybe she just likes doing what she does to people.
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