Clearly thanks to its "breakout" status in Kim Newman's Video Dungeon in the current issue of Empire , the quietly wonderful Norwegian fantasy Thale has just earned itself a sequel. Original writer/director Aleksander Nordaas remains at the helm for more folkloric Scandinavian scares.
The original film concerns the titular forest sprite (tah-lay), who is one of the Huldra: siren-like creatures from Nordic myth. The Huldras' general modus operandi is to lure men to their deaths by sitting naked under waterfalls, but Thale has been captured for study by a well-meaning human guardian and imprisoned for some years. Upon his death, however, she's discovered by the crime-scene cleaners who come to scrub her cabin-in-the-woods, and her emergence from captivity attracts dangerous attention.
The wordless Thale was affectingly played by Silje Reinåmo (Empire** spoke to Silje at the Night Visions festival in Helsinki last autumn) but it's unclear at this stage whether she'll be back for the follow-up. We could, for example, be looking at a different Huldra story, rather than a return to the same characters.
What we do know is that the new film will have a larger budget than its low-key indie predecessor. It will also be English-language with a view to reaching a wider audience: despite its quality and a decent festival life, Thale to all intents and purposes went straight to DVD in most territories, including the UK. The LA-based Epic Pictures group is shouldering the production this time, having caught Thale at SXSW.