Thale is Another Exquisit Modern Fairy Tail

My three favorite horror films made in the last five years had at least two things in common.  Each was made on a shoestring budget and all three presented contemporary versions of stories that were once told to scare children.  Troll Hunter (2010) and Absentia (2011) gave us two distinct versions of the troll: the large lumbering creature in the forest (more or less a Norwegian counterpart to the Japanese kaiju) and the creepy, crawly, thing under the bridge that will drag you back into its lair. 

Thale (2012) makes a very fine third entry.  Here the mysterious creature is not a troll but one of the many imaginary hominids who populate the wooded and cragged regions of our dreamlands.  They are shy and so at home where there is a lot to hide behind and where it can be perilously difficult to distinguish a crooked branch from a furry femur.  The forest folk may or may not be malevolent but they are usually as suspicious of us as we are of them.  An encounter with them may occasionally promise some prize.  It always involves a peril. 

Thale (pronounced tall-eh, as best I could hear it), like Troll Hunter, is a Norwegian film.  It was written and directed by Aleksander Nordaas, apparently on a budget of $10,000.  

Synopsis

The action opens with a couple of fellows cleaning up soupy viscera off of someone’s floor.  Leo (Jon Sigve Skard) is the crime scene cleanup veteran.  He works stoically and patiently while his partner Elvis (Erlend Nervold) pukes into a bucket.  Elvis is not a man who had other options.  They are called to another location where some poor fellow has excreted his entire remains down an outhouse hole. 

They are compelled to enter the house and at that point the two characters switch roles.  Leo is cautious and keeps telling his partner not to touch anything.  Elvis succumbs to the lure of mystery and cannot resist exploring.  Eventually they discover a woman hiding in one of a series of dirty rooms.  Thale (Silje Reinåmo ) is beautiful, naked and mute.  In short order they will discover that she is no ordinary girl and that she is being hunted by two sets of characters with very different powers and motives.  

Comment

The film builds steadily from its quiet but dismal opening toward a climax of violence and horror, all the while following a delicious mystery.  It treats us to a terrible retribution leavened with magical grace.  Nordaas is an alchemist, turning blood, viscera, and abuse into something exquisitely beautiful. 

I will add here two features of the plotting that are very well done.  Elvis is immediately taken with Thale and at first it seems as if this is out of a sexual attraction.  No one could blame him.  In fact, she reminds him of his daughter.  Apparently he is estranged from the mother and child, which goes to explain why he took this awful job.  His instinct is fatherly.  He wants to protect Thale.  That will have important consequences. 

Second, we get some quazi-scientific commentary from cassette tapes recorded by Thale’s deceased benefactor (the guy in the outhouse).  This is done not to make the myth seem more plausible (it wouldn’t serve that purpose) but to weave the mythic aspects of the story together with the stories that modern natural history offers up.  That is exactly how this sort of thing ought to be handled in horror fiction.  

Thale is a first rate piece of work.  It appears that a sequel is in the works, no doubt with a considerably bigger budget.  It will be a miracle if that doesn’t ruin it.  Don’t miss this one. 

Rue Morgue's 200 Alternative Horror Films

My favorite horror magazine is Rue Morgue, just as my favorite podcast was Rue Morgue Radio until they stopped producing it.  On the stands now, the folks at Rue Morgue have a special issue: 200 Alternative Horror Films.  This is one of my favorite kinds of things: a guide full of suggestions for my Netflix queue.  The only beef I have ever had with the folks at Rue Morgue (besides killing RMR) is that their movies reviews are so frequently devoted to telling me what not to watch.  Offering me two hundred films that I should watch is a treasure. 

I just got it yesterday, so I can’t report any major finds yet, but judging from the films listed that I have already seen, their judgments are trustworthy.  I just wish that they had found room for a lot more.  If you are into horror, don’t let this one disappear on you.  

While Rue Morgue Radio is no more, the Rue Morgue Podcast is still going strong.  Today I listened to a marvelous interview with Roger Corman.   Rue Morgue is the place to go for horror nerds like yours truly. 

V/H/S & the brilliance of the small idea

What’s missing in most horror films isn’t the big idea but the small one.  Films with big ideas are great‑Night of the Living Dead (1969), The Blob, Cabin In the Woods‑but they are necessarily rare.  Films with small ideas are rare as well, but there is much less excuse for this.  Horror writers and directors should search for the little ideas that make a character and story genuinely captivating and nurture them with just the right degree of attention. 

V/H/S is a fine little piece of found footage film making that is pretty much a workshop for what I am talking about.  It accepts the usual flaws of the genre: annoying motion, implausible assumptions about people who keep filming while they are running for their lives, etc.  On the other hand, it makes a virtue out of the low budget project.  All the visual effects fit within the realm of the video recorder, which gives them a visceral kick that is almost always lost with CG. 

The film is an anthology of short horror stories.  The context piece involves a gaggle of hoodlums who apparently make a living by harassing people and selling the footage they record as they do so.  They are hired to break in to a house and steal a VHS tape.  One of them watches the tape, on which the other stories appear.  It’s a nice setup.  I got the idea (perhaps it was a product of my own imagination) that anyone who views the tape will end up on the next version of it.  

What makes the film unusually good is that each of the set pieces (with one exception) plays off an exquisite small idea.  In the first story, a bunch of rowdy guys set out to party on the town and hope to end up making a porn film.  Two of them are typical jocks and one is the essential nerd.  At a bar the nerd picks up a very unusual girl who has astonishingly big eyes but who can’t say anything but “I like you”.  She seems to become attached to them, showing up in each subsequent scene though we never see how she comes to be there.  That’s the small idea: the girl who seems to stick around even though she is barely noticed.  The filming here becomes a metaphor for our inattention to detail.  We get glimpses of her body that indicate something very sinister but only fleeting glimpses.   No one pays enough attention until it is way too late. 

Another story is a version of a very familiar one: boys and girls go into the woods and are stalked by a killer.  The small idea here is that the killer flickers in and out of reality, much like the images on the video.  The film makers used the device of video distortion to convey the supernatural power of the killer who can never be caught.  At one point the woman with the camera cries out in frustration: “Why can’t I film you?”  I share the frustration.  I couldn’t get a coherent screen capture of the killer.  He is visible in no single image even if he can be seen more or less as the film rolls. 

In another story, a young woman communicates with her boyfriend by means of a split screen program (Skype?).  We see his face in the lower corner of the screen as she tells him about the poltergeists in her apartment.  What looks like a very common story becomes uncommon by the small idea.  She thinks that something is inside her arm and she starts digging.  This is the most inventive and least predictable of the stories. 

I wouldn’t count this among great films, but it is surely a breath of fresh, if rather bloody, air.  Each story plays with a delicious small idea and tells you just enough and no more.  I really enjoyed this film and I suggest that you will as well. 

Asian Horror Online Free: Revengeful Ghost & Real Estate

That will catch on your spam filter!

I can make a case for serious attention to this genre. I think all cultures have more in common with one another than differences, but the differences are delightful and instructive. That is especially so when they are disturbing to one another.

In the late 90's a series of Asian Horror movies were made that had a tremendous impact on the horror film genre. The Ring, The Eye, The Grudge, Pulse, and Spiral, were the most important. The Ring was the best of them, based on the superb horror novel by Koji Suzuki. All but the last have seen American made versions. On the American Ring can compare, and I think it might be even better than the American version. Spiral was brilliant, but perhaps too ethereal for mass market.

I recently discovered a website, Asian-Horror-Movies.com, that has a very large collection of Asian movies that you can watch online. All of the above mentioned movies are available. The quality is not great, but the price is right and they are there on demand.

Ju-on, or The Grudge (2003) was one of the most frightening ghost stories I have ever enjoyed. At the small risk of spoiling the surprise, it is a series of small stories, each with the same horrific ending. But American fans may not know that the Japanese movie was itself a remake of a version made for Japanese TV in 2000. I just finished watching that.

The TV version is altogether cheap in production. Poor special effects, modest cinematography (though I can't really judge from the online presentation), good but not great acting, and a very slow pace, all distinguish the TV effort from its polished 2003 incarnation. It was nonetheless marvelously effective. It also fills out the story a bit more.

SPOILER ALERT.

The center of the action in both movies is a modest Japanese house. In the TV version, the real estate angle is prominent. How do you unload a house that is inhabited by a ghost that gobbles up people whole? Answer: you lie. In the later version, there's a social service angle. Social workers show up to take care of people living in the house, and they get gobbled up along with everyone else.

The first version makes more explicit what the movie version mostly hinted at: a jealous husband murders his wife and son, and that sets off the chain of events. The boy ghost, Toshio, appears frequently. He is a tragic figure, but all the more terrifying in so far as he isn't malevolent but always signals the approach of mommy ghost. It is her rage that is immortal and insatiable. Anyone who enters the house is acquired by her, like the target of a smart missile, and once acquired there is no defense. Anyone who comes into close contact with someone who is already cursed risks infection. "The grudge," or curse, is like a virus: it propagates itself.

Ju-on is in one respect more like Western horror than typical A-Horror. In the latter, the spirit world leaks into the living world more or less like an ecological disaster. It doesn't have to be anyone's fault. In W-Horror, the root of all evil is sin. In Ju-on, adultery that is the root cause of the terror. The violation of marriage vows opens a rift in the fabric between worlds, with all manner of unfortunate consequences. Tell that to a few Republican governors and Senators. Another interesting thing about the TV version is that it reveals a deep angst in Japanese society about children. There is a current of tremendous guilt about having and protecting children that flows just under the surface of the film. In a nation that has virtually stopped having children, it's no wonder.

The alternate versions of Ju-On are book marked with two of the most frightening scenes in modern movie-making. At the beginning of the TV version, a woman walks over a railway overpass and then down backstreet. She stops dead before an unexceptional house (the house) and looks in. If you've seen the other version first, that brief response to the malevolent presence is very effective.

In the second version, after nearly everyone has been consumed by the ghost, the camera focuses on a utility pole with a missing persons notice tacked to it. You see the faces of missing girls and boys. Where did they go? Then the camera pans out to the street. It's empty. Paper is blowing in the wind. No cars. No people. Can we conceive that the anger of one young woman, stored in an empty house like a super battery, could eat the whole world? That is a real estate crisis.

If you like a good spooky story, check out Asian-Horror-Movies.com. Tell 'em I sent ya.