Melancholic and unnerving, Joachim Trier’s thriller Thelma hooks you in from the get-go. Set against the picturesque backdrop of Norway, we are introduced to Thelma at age six, hunting in the cold winter with her father. There is something dark and powerful about her, and you can’t help but be mesmerised as she gazes intently at a deer in the forest. Your suspicions are confirmed when behind her, Thelma’s father adjusts his rifle without her knowledge, aiming at her head. He doesn’t shoot. But from that moment on, we know that she is something to be feared.
Reintroduced to Thelma (played as an adult by Eili Harboe) as a first-year university student, it is obvious that despite being surrounded by hundreds of peers, she is lonely. Her strict and religious upbringing in a rural town has left her unprepared for college life. She begins to experience extreme seizures, after befriending the beautiful Anja (Kaya Wilkins). We soon learn that these violent episodes are inextricably connected to her obsession with Anja, and as their relationship deepens, it becomes clear that the seizures are symptoms of something inexplicable – possibly supernatural and linked to a horror in her past.
The film itself is stunning in its quiet chaos, each scene building upon the next. Trier has somehow created a film that is violent, but not graphic. He doesn’t rely on blood and gore to terrify his audience. He doesn’t need to. Thelma‘s strength is in its unsettling imagery. A flock of birds swarming in the air in circles, pieces of hair stuck through a glass window, a child pointing out towards a frozen lake. All these seem mundane without the context of the film, but Trier manages to horrify nonetheless.
Trier has crafted a wonderfully complex exploration of repression vs desire, filled with fury and self-discovery. As someone who adores a thriller, this film is undoubtedly a masterful addition to the genre.