THALE

The official UK DVD for Thale that I own and watched last night (© Aleksander L. Nordaas/Bendik Heggen Strønstad/Epic Pictures - reproduced on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After enjoying the admittedly dark and sometimes deeply disturbing folklore-inspired Swedish movie Border, in which a pair of strange humans are revealed not to be humans at all but are actually trolls (this movie is nowadays far too well known, and deservedly so, for my comment to be a spoiler – click here to read my review of it on Shuker In MovieLand), last night I turned to a Norwegian counterpart of sorts, Thale, inasmuch as the entities featured in it were Norway's answer to Sweden's trolls, i.e. the hulderfolk.

Directed by Aleksander L. Nordaas (who was also its co-producer, writer, cinematographer, editor, and set designer), and released in 2012, Thale (pronounced 'Tala', incidentally, like 'gala') was filmed on an absolute shoestring budget of just US$ 10,000, which no doubt explains why most of it was shot in the very restricted setting of a hidden underground cellar (in reality, the basement of Nordaas's father). The movie is a mere 75 minutes long, with a Norwegian soundtrack but English subtitles – yet these are sometimes virtually unreadable, sadly, by always being given in white text, even in scenes featuring them that are themselves predominantly white (e.g. scenes of snow). Fortunately, by watching this movie on DVD, I was able to backtrack and revisit those subtitles that because of this production oversight I had been unable to read on first viewing. The storyline is both intriguing and gritty, and on account of its setting can be quite claustrophobic at times.

SPOILER ALERT!! Due to its highly unusual theme and because I have yet to discover a detailed account of it anywhere online, I am recounting this movie's plot in full below, so if you don't want to know the storyline, read no further!

Publicity poster for Thale (© Aleksander L. Nordaas/Bendik Heggen Strønstad - reproduced on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Leo and Elvis are a two-man crime scene clean-up service, and while working at a house ensconced in the midst of a large forest, dealing with the apparently bloody, decomposed remains of the house's male owner (but without the cause and precise nature of his death ever being revealed), Elvis discovers what had hitherto been a hidden passage leading down to an underground cellar beneath the house. Followed reluctantly by an extremely taciturn and cautious Leo, Elvis ventures down into the cellar, which consists of several rooms, on the walls of which are strange images of even stranger humanoid entities, and dotted around these rooms are various domestic indications that they had been inhabited prior to the home owner's recent, unexplained death.

Indeed, in one room is a large bath still filled with foamy water – but as Elvis looks at it, what appears to be a naked young woman abruptly dives up from beneath the water surface where she had apparently been lying, and grips Elvis tightly round the neck with one arm, as if to throttle and strangle him. Happily, Leo succeeds in pacifying her by throwing a garment to her that was lying on the floor nearby, which she grabs and puts on, concealing her nudity. Leo goes back up the stairs and out of the house to their van, to fetch some food in the form of buns, which he carries back down to the cellar and shares with her and a recovering Elvis. Leo also phones some colleagues to ask them to come over and help them decide what to do with her. Meanwhile, Elvis opens a fridge, and finds inside what appears to be a long tail with a thick tuft of hair at the tip, not unlike that of a cow – and promptly vomits profusely.

At this point, I should warn anyone planning to watch Thale while eating a meal – don't, unless, unlike Elvis, you have a strong stomach. This is because a disproportionately lengthy amount of this movie's total running time is taken up by footage of Elvis vomiting – loudly, profoundly, repeatedly. If there was an Olympic discipline in barfing, Elvis would unquestionably take Gold for Norway, no hesitation! He vomits when he tries to help Leo clean up the remains of the house's dead owner, he vomits when he stops trying to help Leo clean up the remains of the house's dead owner, he vomits when he opens the fridge door and sees the preserved tail inside, he vomits… – ok, you get the picture! Why – or how – anyone with such a delicate stomach and ready propensity for retching could ever have become a crime scene clean-up operative is totally beyond me. It would be like a tightrope walker who suffers from vertigo, or a claustrophobic spelunker. Anyway, I digress – back to the story.

Elvis asks the habitually monosyllabic Leo whether the tail could belong to the young woman, but bearing in mind that there is at least one major scene in which she is shown from the back, revealing a massive scar at the base of her spine, this seems a somewhat unnecessary query on his part, although to be fair, a kindly sort he may be but over-endowed with intelligence Elvis is not. Anyway, what Elvis does find out is that an old tape-recorder on a table still works, and the tapes in it and alongside it, when played by him, reveal one-sided conversations by the now-deceased home owner with the young woman, who seems incapable of human speech and whom he calls Thale.

Combining the information provided by the home owner on tape with flashbacks imparted directly into Elvis's mind when Thale briefly holds her hand against him, it turns out that over 20 years ago, while walking through the forest one snowy winter's day, the home owner had heard a baby crying, and found the infant whom he would name Thale inside what looked like a small cave or tree hollow from the brief view of it shown in the movie. He picked her up and took her home with him, and had cared for her ever since. However, he knew that she wasn't a human baby – no doubt her long tail was a major clue here – and he also knew that those she belonged to would soon come looking for her, and would not deal kindly with him once they found out that he had taken her.

For they were hulderfolk – forest-dwelling humanoid entities, the males of which are normally hideous in form, whereas the females resemble beautiful, alluring human women, who often bewitch unsuspecting human men with their sensual charms before rendering them mad, or dead. Interestingly, however, in Thale the male hulderfolk are presented as tall and spindly-bodied with long arms, savage faces, long tufted tails, and the long legs and hooves of goats, so that they look more like Roman fauns than traditional Norwegian male hulderfolk.

To escape their vengeance, the home owner creates the underground cellar discovered all these years later by Elvis and Leo, where he rears Thale, safe from prying human eyes and seeking hulderfolk ones. He records his observations of her growth and development, conducts various hinted-at but never fully-revealed scientific experiments on her, and even amputates her tail – a gruesome act during which he equally gruesomely records Thale's screams of pain and terror on one of the tapes found and listened to by Elvis. He also discovers various extraordinary powers possessed by Thale – for example, she once closed her hands over a small leafy twig for a moment, and when she opened them the twig had burst into flower.

Meanwhile, back in the present day, Leo abruptly doubles over in pain, convulsed with violent coughing, and then reveals to Elvis that he has lung cancer. Thale softly strokes Leo's face, seemingly intrigued by his thick beard, but she never speaks a word, although she does appear to understand what the two men are saying to her and to each other. Suddenly, loud crashing noises upstairs begin – at first Leo thinks that they are his colleagues whom he had phoned earlier, but the noises seem too aggressive. So they try to barricade and bolt themselves in, while Thale cowers, terrified, in the farthest room from the main cellar door. Eventually, however, gas begins to seep through the door's keyhole and the two men pass out.

When they wake up, they find themselves bound to chairs outside in the forest, some distance from the house, with hoods over their heads, and what seems to be a scientist or paramilitary official in attendance, telling them that he and his colleagues have been searching for Thale for a long time. Thale, meanwhile, is still inside the house's cellar, confronted by several other scientists/paramilitary, but despite being armed they stand little chance against her lightning-fast reflexes as she uses various sharp implements to kill all of them before blowing up the house.

Outside in the forest, the antagonist figure is pondering what to do with Leo and Elvis, and is clearly deciding to dispatch them with his pistol when, without warning, a number of male hulderfolk surround them (tantalisingly, they had previously been seen only very fleetingly). Ignoring Leo and Elvis (who can see nothing clearly through their hoods, but can hear everything perfectly well), they close in on the antagonist figure, pounce upon him, batter him, and then tear him apart, their jaws dripping with blood, before they scatter back into the forest. (Incidentally, I strongly suspect that the home owner's death was also brought about by the hulderfolk, having finally reached him but without realising that the house possessed a hidden underground cellar hiding Thale.)

The scene then switches to a town where Elvis is anxiously sitting outside on a wall, waiting for Leo to come out of the cancer clinic with news of his condition's extent – only to learn from Leo, who is just as dumbfounded as he is, that the cancer has gone, completely, there is no sign of it at all. Although nothing is stated, the inference is that because they had treated her kindly, when Thale touched Leo's face her power had killed the cancer. Leo and Elvis also report Thale missing to a policeman at the local station, who looks on with a mixture of amusement and disbelief when they say that she may be a hulder. (How Leo and Elvis reached the town is never explained.)

The final scene shows Thale walking serenely amid the countryside, evidently having survived the explosion that had destroyed the house and cellar in which she had hitherto lived her entire life, happy at last among the hulderfolk of which she herself is one.

This memorable movie's title character is played by famous Norwegian film, dance, and musical star Silje Reinåmo, perfectly capturing the magic and mystery of the folkloric entity that she is portraying, and ably augmented by Sunniva Lien as the young Thale. Leo is played by Jon Sigve Skard, Elvis by Erlend Nervold.

Like Border, Thale contains some deeply disturbing scenes – indeed, on account of its grim, confined setting, overall I found it far more bleak and depressing than Border, with too much shade and too little light to make for easy viewing. Having said that, I am glad to have seen Thale, but I am by no means certain that I shall ever watch it again.

If you'd like to make up your own mind as to whether Thale is a movie that you'd enjoy watching, be sure to check out its official trailer here on YouTube.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE! 

The full pre-publication cover of the official USA Region 1 DVD of Thale (© Aleksander L. Nordaas/Bendik Heggen Strønstad - reproduced on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)