Trier tries on his first genre film. But instead of making a typical teen superhero flick, he portrays being adolescent truthfully - frightening sexuality: massive confusion where you can't trust your feelings nor your body & the terror of being in love.

| Jan 22, 2025

A gripping Norwegian drama that is both irresistible and rather hard to describe.

| Dec 15, 2022

Joachim Trier’s Norwegian supernatural thriller Thelma gives us a new kind of queer superhero.

| Oct 27, 2022

Thelma effectively utilizes horror tropes to say something profound about the trauma of repressing one’s queer desire and the healing freedom that can come after you finally stop and learn to love and embrace the person you are.

| Sep 28, 2022

Just as Let The Right One In gave the vampire genre a Nordic Noir makeover, Thelma has done the same with the superhero genre, but with much less success.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 2, 2021

Thelma is ultimately a high-art reflection on finding who you are even if it's different from who you thought.

| Jul 28, 2021

Thelma mirrors life: It's beautiful, mysterious, painful and confusing.

| Jul 15, 2020

Thelma's story plays out beautifully, even through the pain and sorrow.

| Feb 4, 2020

An intense treatise on loneliness, repression, and control.

| Dec 6, 2019

Thelma is the kind of brooding, emotionally-charged movie that demands your full attention at all times.

| Oct 9, 2019

Thelma is a wonderfully composed work, one that involves you at a pace of its own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 26, 2019

Anchored by Harboe's deft performance, one that channels both a teenager's aloofness and frustrations while managing to find the maturity to reckon with her new reality, the film is at turns tense and menacing.

| May 28, 2019

At once a haunting drama, a delicate love story, and a supernatural horror film, Thelma is a captivating picture that burns slow and leaves a lasting mark when pressed.

| May 4, 2019

[A] brilliant meditation on one young woman's discovery of the wants she has stifled for so long.

| Jan 17, 2019

Trier (and his co-writer Eskil Vogt) thoroughly and skillfully align supernatural powers with queer discovery (particularly that of a young woman) in unexpected ways and do so without ruining the film with male-gaze shots.

| Jan 16, 2019

Both a psychological thriller and a supernatural horror, at first glance much in "Thelma" sounds familiar - a teenage girl, extreme religiosity, sex, inexplicably smashing windows, a snake - but they never feel like tropes.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2019

Joachim Trier's supernatural drama is a moving allegorical tale, that feels more human than its genre-tinged narrative might suggest.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2018

THELMA is an odd and disturbing film, visceral but ultimately unsatisfying.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 4, 2018

Horror allows Thelma to work with the history queer people have been dealt; the genre never requests an apology for yesterday's transgressions, but it might seek reparations by giving the viewer a few spooks.

| Nov 10, 2018

Thelma's central love story doles out plenty of instances of relief.

| Oct 31, 2018