THALE

Leo (Jon Sigve Skard) works for No Shit Cleaning Services, who are responsible for scraping up the messes found at crime scenes. He's a seasoned pro, seemingly unaffected by anything his job throws at him. Not so his friend Elvis (Erlend Nervold), who stands in for an absent colleague at the film's start.

Elvis is prone to copious vomiting while attempting to help clean up the aftermath of a gory female murder. Unfortunately for him, the pair are allowed just a short break for lunch before being summoned straight to another job: the discovery of a dead old man who lived in a cabin in the woods.

The man's been dead for some time and the guys are tasked with the job of locating parts of his corpse that local wildlife has torn off and scattered around his home. While searching, Elvis uncovers a hole in a wall that leads to a secret compartment beneath the cabin. Despite protestations from Leo, Elvis continues to search this secret room. He finds lots of out-of-date tins of food, walls covered in strange anatomical drawings and an old cassette recorder. As he begins to listen to the tape in the latter's deck, the bathtub of murky water beside him begins to stir.

A naked young women then bursts out of the water, tearing a gasmask from her face and gasping for air. At this point, Leo enters the room - and both men are aghast at what they're witnessing.

Offering the woman clothing and deducing from the writing on the cassettes that her name is Thale (Silje Reinamo), the boys then decide their boss would be better equipped to decide what happens next. So Leo gives him a call but is told it will take him some time to get there.

Elvis stays with Thale while Leo retires to his van to get her some fresh food. In the meantime, Elvis tries to pacify the startled Thale while also listening to the cassettes in a bid to find out who she is.

At first what he hears makes it sound like she was abducted many years ago by the old man and held captive in his secret basement where he tortured her. But the more Elvis hears, the more he realises this story is not so simple. How come, for example, the old man's spoken notes speak of the need to repeatedly bathe the girl in a bid to prevents "the others" from tracking her down? And what of the drastic measure he took to ensure her secrecy there was maintained, the evidence of which has been kept in his blood-stained fridge?

Hints at the truth are further revealed to Elvis when Thale holds his face and telepathically conveys select memories to him. But what he and Leo are both oblivious to are the figures convening in the woods around them, gradually circling in with an eye to hooking up with the mute Thale...

You make a low-budget genre film nowadays based on Norwegian folklore (in this case, the 'huldra'), and you're going to get compared to TROLL HUNTER. Indeed, it's impossible not to think of that film once the nature of THALE has been established.

But Aleksander Nordaas' film is different in that it eschews the popular 'found footage' style in favour of a more traditional storytelling method. It also plays down the action aspect of TROLL HUNTER, opting instead for claustrophobic low-key tension. Luckily, the three central performers (virtually the only people in the entire film) give excellent performances in this respect. Full marks to Reinamo here for conveying such ambiguity and emotion without uttering a word. If her initial appearance on screen brings to mind the 1990s film NELL, it's only to remind us how comparatively awful Jodie Foster was in that lead role.

Stylistically the film looks great considering its apparent meagre budget, thanks largely to nice lighting and some wonderful shots of Norway's naturally beautiful countryside. The snowy landscapes at the start of the film recalled LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, while the score was melancholic and the pace unrushed: at first, I thought the attempts at humour were badly misplaced within these settings, but Nordaas does manage to deliver an evenly toned thriller come the end.

Gripes would have to be the matter of the story not concluding satisfactorily (the finale does disappoint, especially when you've gathered what's going on relatively early into proceedings) and Nordaas's infrequent tendency to value his stylised flashbacks and showy camera techniques over his storytelling skills. The few fantasy scenes towards the end rely on CGI (not too shabbily executed, admittedly) and err, like TROLL HUNTER did, more towards the likes of LORD OF THE RINGS than anything likely to induce nightmares.

Still, at just 75 minutes in length, Nordaas' film is aesthetically appealing, taut for the most part and infused with plenty of dark Scandinavian humour.

The screener disc provided for review by Metrodome was unfortunately a very basic early test one, offering nothing but the film itself (complete with an occasional 'Property of Metrodome' watermark during playback). Alas, I'm unable to comment on the quality of their final disc or what any potential bonus features on it may be.

Still, what I can say is that the 16x9 picture here was generally a very healthy-looking one. Colours were vivid, blacks were solid and flesh-tones were accurate. Some exterior scenes suffered from blown-out exposure but never to an extent that my viewing pleasure was ruined.

The Norwegian 2.0 audio provided on the test disc was also a good offering. English subtitles were burned in but were easily readable at all times.

As mentioned above, there were no extras or even menus on this screener.

THALE came as a pleasant surprise to me. It was one of those films that I'd vaguely been aware of previously but had never paid attention to. As it turns out, it's a fun little piece that I could easily sit through again.

Review by Stuart Willis