Thelma (2017)
Directed by Joachim Trier
A college student starts to experience extreme seizures. She soon learns that the violent episodes are a symptom of inexplicable abilities.
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The mix of supernatural powers and Christian devotion is a bit reminiscent of Stephen King’s “Carrie,” and Trier’s control of the story’s tension is as strong as anything in Brian De Palma’s repertoire.
Joachim Trier’s unexpected foray into genre territory recalls the films of M. Night Shyamalan and Brian De Palma’s Carrie, giving the tale of a girl with weird powers an icy Scandinavian mood and a slow-going pace which feels like a walk in deep snow.
Thelma, like Stephen King’s Carrie, has some kind of power, and it appears to be in the same medical family as that Twilight Zone episode about the kid who could wish people into the cornfield.
Many critics have already compared Thelma to Carrie – the eponymous telekinetic ball of raging hormones from Stephen King’s first smash novel.
Centered on a late-blooming, home-schooled college freshman, Thelma delivers uncanny echoes of Brian de Palma’s 1976 coming-of-age horror film Carrie with finesse.
Brian De Palma's Carrie echoes through this Norwegian psychological thriller, which is subtler and more daring than its model.
At the risk of offending Scandinavian readers by conflating two distinct nations, this Norwegian film reminded me quite a bit of the Swedish picture Let The Right One In, which is a very high compliment indeed.
( Let The Right One In , a cousin of coming-of-age horror, also leaps to mind, though that’s also because this film, like that one, contains some terrible fire effects.)
It also confidently updates and builds on the modern-day, minimalist conventions of Let the Right One In and Goodnight Mommy .
Thelma does indeed look quite a bit like the most famous Scandinavian horror/romance film American audiences are likely to be familiar with: Let the Right One In.
Trier tells Thelma’s story primarily through images, rather than words – and what haunting images they are, reminiscent of such classic, freaky fantasias as Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Lynch’s Eraserhead .
Trier tells Thelma’s story primarily through images, rather than words – and what haunting images they are, reminiscent of such classic, freaky fantasias as Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Lynch’s Eraserhead .
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American moviegoers may not know his name just yet, but over the course of his first three features—2006’s Reprise, 2011’s Oslo, August 31st , and 2016’s English-language Louder than Bombs—Norwegian director Joachim Trier has established himself as one of cinema’s most daring and humanistic dramatists.
All this from the Norwegian Trier, whose critically acclaimed works “Reprise” (2006) and “Oslo, August 31st” (2011), a psychological buddy movie and a melancholy tale of suicide, never quite indicated that “Thelma” was inside of him.
Trier, who made the soulful Reprise and Oslo, August 31st —as well as the superb Louder Than Bombs , his English-language debut—is one of the most gifted, underrated filmmakers working today.
Trier, in films as diverse as " Reprise ," "Oslo, August 31st," " Louder Than Bombs ," and now "Thelma" (all of which he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt ), effectively taps into the undercurrents of dread running through human beings' lives.
This gifted Norwegian filmmaker — not nearly well-known enough on these shores for his intensely empathetic dramas “Reprise” and “Oslo, August 31st” — attempts to retrofit his penchant for interior psychological journeys to the demands of supernatural horror in “Thelma.”
It also confidently updates and builds on the modern-day, minimalist conventions of Let the Right One In and Goodnight Mommy .