Thale

As far as the premise is concerned, Thale is quite an original film, but unfortunately the execution is what gets in the way. Setting the action in a remote cabin in the woods that hides many a terrifying secret was a good choice, but it's somewhat ruined by the actors and, later, the look of the hoodlums, which was one of the film's most notable technical flaws (aside from the final shots of the woods, which looked a little too televisual). As a result, it's a film with visible potential, but that fades as the story progresses, with a below-average conclusion that not even the typically cheesy Scandinavian visuals can save. (27.06.2016)

From Thale I was expecting a mysterious thriller about the hulder, a mythical Scandinavian creature. When put that way, you imagine a pure genre flick about a monster chasing a group of people in the woods. But that’s not what Thale is, quite the opposite, in fact. It tries to be a slow and intimate film where someone in the middle of somewhere runs into something that overwhelms them, which leads to a lot of dialogues, monologues, brooding and musing. Most of the action takes place in a building in the middle of the woods, where Aleksander Nordaas generates a beautiful, thick and oppressive atmosphere – in terms of visuals and sound, it’s great, and it would be worthy of a higher rating. The problems begin when the camera leaves that cellar and goes outside. The film loses all its atmosphere and starts to look cheap, and when the ridiculously looking CGI creatures show up, everything is ruined. But the worse is that even the dialogue-driven wannabe philosophical subtext also fizzles out. 5/10 (05.09.2012)