Thale

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.