Thale – 1 out of 5
I stumbled upon the Norwegian film Thale when its trailer first hit the internet a couple years back. I had planned to watch it but the moment never came and it was eventually pushed back on my list. Recently, I was reminded of its existence and decided that I would finally pull the trigger on checking this one out. As you can see, I wasn’t that impressed.
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| The look on this character's face portrays a higher level of excitement than I had after watching this. Also, this is the only reaction this character has throughout the movie. |
Two friends; Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard), are hired for a crime scene clean up in a secluded home out in the middle of nowhere. While cleaning up the gruesome scene, the two stumble upon a hidden room in the house that is filled with strange equipment and cassettes of a man speaking about an experiment he’s been running. Among the collection, the two men discover a mysterious woman (Silje Reinåmo) hidden there. She can’t seem to speak and appears to be lost, confused and very hungry. The duo soon learns that there’s much more to her than they realize and some very dangerous parties are out to collect her. One of them is the government and the other is more of the mythical creature persuasion.
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| Shhh, the angry little creature that a murdered man kept in a hidden room is sleeping. |
Thale had the potential to be a nice mythical thriller that is set on a small, intimate scale but, the biggest problem I had with the film, is that I found it super boring. First off, the movie isn’t long. It doesn’t even hit the hour and a half mark so any time wasted in this feature feels like a huge chunk was tossed down the drain. That being said, the movie wasted none of that time in establishing Elvis and Leo and getting them to find the room where this woman is kept. After that occurs, her history is teased through quick edit flashbacks and then very lazily explained through voice over of the man who took her and kept her in the room. This dynamic might have been fine once or twice but to have her entire backstory be fleshed out in this manner felt incredibly lazy and made the film look like it is telling rather than showing.
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| Same reaction...also, try not to laugh at the bad CG in the background. |
This dynamic also had an impact on the pacing of the film because it gave the plot a lecture quality. I never felt like I was watching the plot unfold before me but rather it seemed like I was listening to someone give me a monotonous rendition of what is happening. This made for the first half of the film coming off like a chore to endure. The film already is suffering from a lack of tone, atmosphere and the reality of the presentation (the camera work, editing and cinematography) coming off very cheap and looking like a hastily put together Direct-to-DVD feature. Adding to these problems of a narrative that feels phoned-in and a pace that feels like it wants to actively go against the natural sense of urgency that finding a mysterious woman in a hidden room of a home where a murder took place should have been and it made for a film that came off very boring and slow with no hope of it paying off.
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| Even when the lady/mythical woodland creature goes on a killing spree in the third act couldn't save this film. This movie made mindless violence boring! |
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| Still no real reaction... |
Seemingly upping the ante for the boring factor, the two leads aren’t very attention grabbing. I will give the movie points for attempting to give them some depth and some sort of dynamic to them but it’s introduced very haphazardly out of nowhere and in some clunky dialogue and most of these developments go underused until the final moments—and then at that point the film treats this part like it pulled off something brilliant and not like it was something that came off like it was pulled out of one’s backside. Neither Nervold nor Skard are bad actors but both of them really felt like one trick ponies that were only capable of doing one form of reaction. For Skard, it was staring at things with utter indifference and for Nervold it was staring wide-eyed while turning around slowly and keeping his mouth agape. Seriously, drink every time Nervold is doing this because the story does it a lot and never is the revelation that follows worthy of this repeated action.
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| I wonder if this reaction is what got him the job during the audition process... |
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| Good for him, sticking with what he knows... |
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| Whoa, changing it up a little bit... |
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| This one's a little softer, for the more mild surprises. |
Never did I find that this film ever pick up and become something worthy of note. Thale’s revelation wasn’t that spectacular, the “action” that takes place towards the end wasn’t really that engaging and the ending was amazingly “meh.” There’s even some truly atrocious CG thrown in to boot but having this added to the “negative list” feels pointless because they couldn’t even make the story interesting, provide decent acting, and make the whole feature look good so why should I not be surprised that the effects look terrible?
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| Are your woods being invaded by Playstation 1 graphics? |
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| Those bastards did it. They were able to capture both of their reactions in one shot. Amazing! |
I wouldn’t go as far to say that Thale is a mess or that it is garbage—“garbage” is one of the modern day critic’s favorite words to use when describing a film they didn’t like, no matter what degree they dislike it. No, it’s not garbage, I just found it boring. The core concept of it is fairly sound and it might have actually been a good movie but the plot’s pacing is way too slow, the reveals are lazy and aren’t rewarding enough to be intriguing, the technical aspects look cheap, and the acting is very vanilla and fairly forgettable. Reinåmo is clearly the best of the film but, like Nervold and Skard, she feels like a one-trick pony as her reactions are pretty much the same throughout the entire film. Overall, Thale just felt very uninspired and appeared more like it was just settling for less than the bare minimum than it was trying to craft a unique and engaging feature.
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