Movies
[TIFF Review] Striking Coming-of-Age Thriller ‘Thelma’ Resembles ‘Carrie’
Thelma is a tricky film. It would be easy to dismiss it as a Norwegian Carrie, but to do so belittles director Joachim Trier‘s film as a simple imitator. It’s undeniable, however, that Thelma bears a passing resemblance to the DePalma classic; it’s the story of a girl who has been raised in a strict Christian household, presided over by authoritarian parents, who finds freedom – and horror – in her first love affair. The film complicates the narrative by making Thelma (Eili Harboe)’s love interest a girl, Anja (Okay Kaya), and it is in this element that results in Trier’s most interesting – and problematic – ideas.
It’s clear from the opening scene that something is amiss in Thelma’s home life. The young girl and her father Trond (Henrik Rafaelsen) share a moment that immediately establishes their relationship: he’s so afraid of her that he contemplates killing her. The rest of the film follows Thelma, now an adult, as she leaves home for the first time to attend Biology at the University in Oslo. She goes to class, studies, swims at the pool, but has difficulty making connections to other people. It’s in the library, after first spotting Anja, that she has her first seizure, an event that coincides with a flock of birds striking the window. The incident is unnerving and Trier uses it to create a visual connection between Thelma’s loss of control and the supernatural.
For genre fans, this is familiar territory. The question is not if Thelma will go off, but when and how bad will it be? Trier, however, distinguishes his film from Carrie by aligning Thelma’s power to her burgeoning lesbian desires. As she and Anja grow closer, so too do the frequency of her attacks, which Trier shoots like strobe light attacks.
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It’s clear that Thelma’s struggles with her sexuality are directly related to her religious bringing. The screenplay repeatedly reinforces her slow descent into vice and how this clashes with her beliefs about drinking, drugs and her desire for Anja, which she ineffectually tries to pray away. Events come to a head in two different encounters: one is a thrilling sequence at a contemporary dance performance that nearly brings the roof down and another is a humiliating incident at a house party that makes wonderfully creepy and sensual use of Biblical imagery. In the aftermath, it becomes clear just how powerful Thelma is, a discovery that drives her home to her father and mother Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) where the truth behind the opening scene is revealed.
The truth, however, is far less surprising than the build-up and even casual viewers should have no problem anticipating what’s to come. Problematically, Thelma’s confrontation with her father revises everything about her relationship with Anja in a way that feels, at best, dismissive and, at worst, mildly homophobic. While it’s liberating to see Thelma move away from the Christian/telekinesis dichotomy of Carrie, Trier’s attempt to explore sexuality is mildly emblematic of a straight white male’s idea of queer identity.
Aside from the slightly draggy final act and the problematic gender politics, Thelma has a lot going for it. Trier uses his special effects sparingly (to great effect) and he has a keen eye for visually dynamic shots. He also knows how to frame moments of intimacy, focusing on the slight touch of Thelma and Anya’s hands. Both women are fantastic in their roles, particularly Harboe who manages to convey innocence, sexiness, and vulnerability all at once. Despite its issues, Thelma is well worth seeking out.
There’s been a lot of talk about how Christopher Nolan snuck in some horror elements into his epic adaptation of The Odyssey. However, even before the Cyclops began to eat Ithican soldiers and Circe subjected them to magical body-horror, cinemagoers were already witnessing supernatural terror through a certain trailer that was attached to most IMAX screenings of Nolan’s film.
It turns out that this trailer was for Rob Savage’s Other Mommy, an adaptation of Bird Box author Josh Malerman’s horror novel, Incidents Around the House. With the teaser now available online and revealing that the award-winning Jessica Chastain is playing the titular antagonist (as well as her ill-fated human counterpart), not to mention the fact that the picture is being helmed by the director of hits like Host and The Boogeyman, genre fans are understandably hyped for this upcoming thriller.
That’s why I’ve decided to take a closer look at the trailer and share four things we learned from this sneak peek at Other Mommy!
4. Rob Savage is Going Back to His Supernatural Horror Roots
I know I’m in the minority when I admit that Dashcam is my favorite Rob Savage movie, but even I understand why the filmmakers’ fans have been waiting a while for the director to get back to telling more grounded paranormal stories as he did with 2020’s Host.
Other Mommy obviously isn’t a found footage movie, but moments like the poltergeist activity on the kitchen table combined with the nature of the source material, which actually features a full-on exorcism, indicate that this adaptation is more than a simple creature feature. That’s why I think Savage is once again going to borrow from the same ghostly narratives that made his debut film such a viral hit.
3. Other Mommy is a More Convincing Doppelganger in the Adaptation
Part of the horror from Malerman’s original novel came from the fact that the entity taking on the form of Bela’s (Arabella Olivia Clark) mother wasn’t very good at passing itself off as human. This resulted in several uncanny moments where other characters began to notice that there was something visibly wrong with the family and decided to keep their distance.
Savage’s film appears to be taking a different route, with the trailer showing a version of the entity that can, at least physically, imitate Chastain’s character perfectly. This change is likely the result of the filmmakers wanting to incorporate more paranoid scenes where Bela and her father, played by Jay Duplass, are confused about which Mommy is safe to interact with.
2. The Family is Also Better Off This Time Around
Incidents Around the House featured some interesting subtext about how poverty can negatively affect American family dynamics. After all, the main characters were already feeling scared and isolated before the entity emerged from Bela’s closet and began scratching at their emotional wounds. The trailer for the movie, however, depicts the family as being relatively well off before these incidents begin to occur.
I can only imagine that this part of the story was changed so that the family’s fall from grace can be even more dramatic as the mom and dad’s pasts are revealed and Bela falls further into the clutches of the demonic antagonist.
1. Jessica Chastain is Embodying Evil Dead Rise’s Alyssa Sutherland
Mothers turning against their children is one of the most disturbing horror tropes out there (just check out classics like Hereditary and Carrie if you need proof), but it takes a remarkably skilled actress to pull off such a monstrous transformation. This is especially true when both a regular, loving mother and the Other share the screen in the same film.
That’s why I appreciate how Chastain appears to be channeling another evil redhead mother that recently traumatized audiences with her performance. It’s too early to be sure, but I’m fairly confident that Chastain’s character has at least some amount of Ellie in her cinematic DNA – Ellie being the iconic deadite brought to life by Australian actress Alyssa Sutherland in 2023’s Evil Dead Rise.
Let us know in the comments if you think we missed any important details from the trailer, and don’t forget to check out Other Mommy when it hits theaters on October 9!
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