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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2023
Anna must help the ghost of a murdered boy to find rest. Thelma must learn how to focus her powers into healing instead of hurting others. Ida must convince her autistic sister to use her otherworldly abilities of the mind to influence physical reality and oppose evil deeds. The Monitor (Babycall, Pål Sletaune, 2011), Thelma (Joachim Trier, 2017) and The Innocents (De uskyldige, Eskil Vogt, 2021) are examples in Norwegian horror cinema of characters not just experiencing the fantastic, but actually wielding supernatural powers.
These three films are psychological horror tales that take place in settings typical of the urbanised Norway’s modern social democracy, but where not everything is right and bright. There is a hidden darkness in the woods and mountains of this country, but also in the city, where the rich and successful mingle with the less so. Supernatural lead characters Anna, Thelma and Ida are plunged into the very heart of this urban umbra.
If the wilderness of Cold Prey (Fritt vilt, Roar Uthaug, 2006) represents a slasher fantasy of Norwegian darkness, the cityscapes of The Monitor, Thelma and The Innocents put into focus the smaller and more seemingly realistic premises of stories that even so carry the weight of the supernatural. The gothic influence is traditionally strong in the psychological horror subgenre, and the Norwegian kind is no exception to the rule.
Norwegian gothic: The Monitor
All horror has gothic roots. As Fred Botting writes, the gothic was originally a kind of negative aesthetics where darkness provided an opposition to the Enlightenment of the mid-1700s. In particular, it is easy to recognise the psychological horror movie, including the Norwegian branch of the subgenre, in Botting’s succinct definition of the gothic: ‘Gothic texts are, overtly but ambiguously, not rational, depicting disturbances of sanity and security, from superstitious beliefs in ghosts and demons, displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to portrayals of perversion and obsession’ (2014: 2). Pål Sletaune handled some aspects of this definition in Next Door (Naboer, 2005), and he would deal with yet more of them in his subsequent horror feature.
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