★ 6 / 10
Thale is an atmospheric horror film from Norway
Dsnake1
Thale is an atmospheric horror film from Norway based on the huldra from Norwegian folklore. A pair of crime scene cleaners stumbles across a hidden room…
Thale is an atmospheric horror film from Norway based on the huldra from Norwegian folklore.
A pair of crime scene cleaners stumbles across a hidden room containing Thale, a huldra who holds the appearance of a woman. The first two-thirds of the movie are the pair unraveling the mystery of who and what Thale is and why she is in this hidden compartment.
These two-thirds are fantastic. The world building is fun and pulls from the folklore, and the mystery of it all ramps up and up. We don't know that Thale is there, and once we find that out in a spectacular fashion, we slowly begin to unravel the puzzle of it all. Is Thale an abused little girl? Is she a monster? Is someone looking for her?
As this draws out, we begin to find out more and more about the characters. Each of the main three has a story to tell and a backstory worth investigating, but we really only catch glimpses of everyone's story, although we do see significant amounts of Thale's.
While the atmosphere, the world building, and the character building are excellent in the first two-thirds of the movie, this seems to fall off during the climax. It turns out that there are people hunting Thale. They incapacitate the two cleaners using gas while Thale hides back in a bathtub with a gas mask hooked up to air.
After a cut, we find that the two men are outside, tied up and blindfolded. A man moves to dispose of them after giving the standard evil villain monologue but is interrupted by an explosion. The explosion destroyed the building where Thale had been picking off the remaining people hunting her down. After the explosion, a pack of huldra come through and rip the man to shreds, leaving the two cleaners alive.
The film ends with all of the problems being solved. Thale is back with the rest of the huldra, and the problems that the two other protagonists were dealing with were magically solved.
While the first two-thirds of the film was full of strong aspects, the last third flipped all of that on its head. The atmosphere shifted from creepy and mysterious to something you'd find in an action movie, and the ending was simply everyone getting what they wanted without a satisfying resolution to the buildup of tension and mystery.
Is it worth a watch? Sure. Don't expect to be blown away, though. The slow burn of the first forty to fifty minutes is incredibly enjoyable and the last parts of the movie are fine, even if they don't follow the same mold.
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★ 7 / 10
More adult fantasy and mysterious drama, than horror.
t-filipkova
Thale is visually stunning, interesting in mythology and well - played movie. Yes, the story is poor and screenplay has some holes, design of "hurdles" is…
Thale is visually stunning, interesting in mythology and well - played movie. Yes, the story is poor and screenplay has some holes, design of "hurdles" is quite upsetting (the CGI is done well, but they look really strange), but this has an mysterious atmosphere, supplemented by shots of beautiful nature and melancholic music. Short footage is good move how to cover few deficiencies of screenplay, but maybe, it should have been 10 minutes longer...
Over an above, the character of Thale was played very suggestively by beautiful Silje Reinåmo, and the characters of "two friends" are quite nice.
Thale is strange fantasy, but it has also some aspects of art movie (the way the shots are stylized, minimalistic acting, static camera, few actors...).
I'm certainly sure, that Thale will be forgotten, and that's really pity. It is because this movie is very unconventional, so it will barely engage the attention of masses, or at least some group of people - and maybe because you can't classify Thale into some universal film genre. It has some aspects of horror, fantasy, and also mystery drama. In addition, the low budget is obvious - but I don't think it is an negative in here.
Would I recommend this movie to someone?
Namely, if you expect much of horror/gore and action - forget it and better don't watch it. But if you like shots of beautiful nature accompanied by suggestive music, slow storyline, and you like the impressions more than action, maybe you will enjoy the Thale, as I did.
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Does a cow's tale involve it leaping over the moon?