Title – Thale
Language – Norwegian
Genre – Supernatural,
monster
Thale starts with Leo
& Elvis cleaning up a dead body form a house (It’s their job) when they
discover a hidden cellar. It is obvious
that some one use to live in the cellar as it is furnished. The pair soon
discover a number of out of date tinned food, an old cassette player, a bath
full of a creamy liquid and a sealed fridge all of which are coved in grime and
don’t seem to have been used for a while.
As they explore, Leo & Elvis discover a naked woman who is, to begin
with quite aggressive. The woman never
speaks but they learn from the old tapes that she is known as ‘Thale’. As the cleaners wait for their friends to
check out the basement it becomes obvious that there is more to Thale then
meets the eye but can they find out what before what ever is in the woods
outside gets in, maybe there is a clue inside the fridge.
Thale is a slow paced
yet atmospheric ‘Cabin in the woods’ movie with a small but effective
cast. For most of the movie we only have
the 3 main characters, Leo, Elvis & Thale.
As Thale never speaks most of the movie is made up of the other two
characters trying to find out why she is in the cellar from the old tapes and
this does lead to the film having quite a slow pace but it is never boring as
the atmosphere inside the cabin is quite claustrophobic as, to begin with we
never know what Thale is going to do.
Then, as the film progress’s the atmosphere becomes more oppressive as
the creatures in the wood seem to be getting closer.
In some (small) way
Thale reminds me of the original ‘Evil Dead’ with the atmospheric cabin and the
mysterious tape player but, Thale never need’s the use of gore in the same way
as ‘Evil Dead’ as it relies more on the mystery of Thales past and of not
knowing what is outside.
There does seem to be
a couple of unnecessary plot lines (without giving two much away Leo’s secret
& Elvis’ secret) in Thale which I think were in to help build up the
characters and (in once case) to show something of the true nature and power of
Thale herself but I believe that, whist there was point to Leos secret the film
would not have lost anything with out it and, although Elvis’ secret really
didn’t have much bearing on the main plot of the film it felt a little bit of a
lose end, it could either have been brought into the main story a bit more or
left out.
I would highly
recommend giving Thale a watch, it is very atmospheric film and the part of
Thale is especially well portrayed by Silje Reinåmo
who manages to develop the character with out saying a word or, for a lot of
the movie wearing any clothes.
