- Directed by: Joachim Trier
- Written by: Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier
- Stars: Eili Harboe, Kaya Wilkins, Henrik Rafaelsen
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 56 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQMHG9SGlU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s beautifully filmed, very well acted, and super slow moving. But it does build and holds your attention as it does. When Thelma goes away to college, things start getting strange. Then frightening. And we gradually find out just how weird things really are. We both thought it was really good.
Spoilery Synopsis
A little girl and her father walk on the frozen lake in Norway, and she can see the fish through the ice. She watches as he loads his hunting rifle. He points the gun at a deer and then swivels to point it at the child. He considers shooting her for a long time and then puts the gun away. Credits roll.
We cut to a university, where the now-grown Thelma has her first day. She gets a call from her mother, who’s been tracking her location; the parents are very watchful and overprotective.
At the library, Thelma starts getting a seizure, and a bunch of birds fly into the windows. The doctor is called, and she wants to get the family history, looking for epilepsy, but Thelma is evasive– she doesn’t want her parents to know.
That night, in her dorm, a snake crawls in through the window and gets into her bed.
The next day, Thelma talks to Anja, another student, about the seizure yesterday. Thelma’s parents come to visit, and they talk about religious topics, and they don’t like her new attitude. They put her down for not believing in Creationism (she’s a biology student). They talk about her lack of humility.
She sees on instagram that Anja is at a restaurant, so Thelma gets herself cleaned up and goes there. She sits with the group, and they all wonder why she doesn’t drink. Some of the boys make fun of religion. Afterwards, Thelma goes dancing with Anja. It’s fun– until her very unhappy parents call.
Much later that night, Thelma wakes up to find Anja standing outside in the park, apparently in a trance. Thelma gets another seizure and Anja helps her back into her room and spends the rest of the night there. In the morning, Anja can’t explain what she was doing outside the apartment last night or why she came.
Thelma and Anja start spending a lot of time together, and they both have very different family situations. They go to the ballet, and Anja’s hands sneak over to Thelma’s lap, which she did not expect. Thelma starts getting the shakes, and the lights in the theater start to sway. This all stops when the two girls start to kiss. This goes against Thelma’s strong religious beliefs, which is very conflicting for her. She calls her father and tells him about drinking alcohol.
Thelma goes to a party with a boy, Kristoff, and drinks a lot more than she’s used to. He gets her really high, and Anja doesn’t approve. She looks at Kristoff, and parts of him start to glow red. Anja does as well, which results in another kiss. Soon, there’s a snake in bed with the two of them. The snake goes into Thelma’s mouth– maybe all that was just a fantasy.
Thelma has an MRI to check for signs of a tumor, but they can’t rule out epilepsy. The medical records show she had seizures when she was six years old, but she doesn’t remember any of that.
We get a flashback to young Thelma, her mother, and the new baby. Thelma gets jealous and upset, and then, when Thelma has a little seizure, the baby simply vanishes. When her mother gets upset, Thelma makes the baby reappear under the couch. The parents know that Thelma did it, somehow.
In the MRI and exam, Thelma goes into an induced seizure, and across town, Anja sees some effects of it– she vanishes. Turns out, it’s not epilepsy; the doctor thinks it all psychological, a symptom of something else. The doctor says that Thelma’s grandmother had lots of similar problems, but Thelma was always told she was dead. She’s not dead, so Thelma is intrigued and visits her grandmother’s hospital.
The old woman isn’t very responsive, but she’s been on drugs for too many years. She’s had delusions ever since her husband disappeared; she blamed herself. “She believed that she made things happen with her mind.”
Returning to school, Thelma wonders where Anja has been. Anja’s mother doesn’t know where she went either. Thelma goes to the school pool and has another seizure while swimming. That goes badly. Afterward, she decides it’s time to go home to her parents.
The parents drug Thelma’s tea. Father tells her the whole story about the past. Once again, the baby disappeared, and this time, Thelma was asleep in bed. She didn’t do it on purpose this time and couldn’t bring him back like she did the other time. She then wanders out to the frozen river nearby and points under the ice. Not long after the mother jumped off a bridge, which paralyzed her instead of killing her.
Thelma talks to her father about Anja, and he suggests that maybe Thelma made Anja fall in love with her. He might be right. That night, the parents talk about what they have to do to keep Thelma from killing anyone else.
Thelma’s father, a doctor, prepares a syringe full of poison, but sets it aside since she’s all drugged up anyway. She understands that they did the same thing to her grandmother. She asks her father to let her go, but he says no. In the morning, she has another seizure in her sleep and, outside on the lake, her father bursts into flame.
Thelma wakes up, knows what she’s done, and swims down to the bottom of the lake. Then she comes up in the pool where she first talked to Anja. Nope, just a vision as she climbs out of the lake and coughs up a dead bird. Elsewhere, her phone rings; Anja is calling, no longer gone. And the dead bird flies away.
She goes back to the house, where her mother is clearly terrified of her. Thelma puts her hands on her mother, and she can suddenly walk again.
Thelma goes back to school and smiles at the birds as she gets back with Anja, who is fine again today. Happy ending?
Brian’s Commentary
It’s slow moving, and much higher on the drama than the horror. We swap back and forth between the parents being terrible people and being innocent victims.
It’s basically an allegory about how university changes a person, but maybe this is taken a little to extremes. I was expecting the end to be a lot like “Carrie,” but that’s not the way it went.
It’s good. Extremely slow-moving, but I never got bored.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s beautifully filmed and well acted with a cast that seems perfectly natural in their roles. It’s extremely slow moving, but still managed to fascinate me as it went along as it builds.
The scenario is interesting. Almost more of a mutant powers, coming of age, suppressing abilities kind of story than horror. The parents seem like decent people stuck in an impossible situation. Sort of a happy ending, except for Dad – apparently she didn’t forgive him for the things he did.
Overall, I thought it was really good.
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