Bookstore Saturday: Electric Boogaloo

A Bookstore Saturday happened. 

It almost didn't. We (the missus and I) were two bookstores in and had yet to find a store that suitably fit the requirements. As a reminder, Bookstore Saturday Requirements (BsSR) include the following:

1. Takes place on a Saturday (negotiable)
2. In a used bookstore (smattering of new allowed)
3. Involves 2 or more hours of in-store browsing (is it even possible to do less?)
4. Store must honor Used Bookstore Gods in look, feel and browsing experience

And in case you're wondering, requirement number 4 was the stumbling block. It usually is.

You know what Bookstore Gods hate? They hate when bookstore proprietors don't give horror its own section of shelves in their store. 

You want Bookstore Gods down on your neck, breathing all heavy and wet in your ear, just decide horror is not an actual genre and stick whatever horror titles you have in with "Mystery and Thriller." 

Or worse yet, just sprinkle those few horror titles you bother to stock in amongst your gigantic, sprawling "General Fiction" section that's already taking up half your shelf space.

Bookstore Gods are really pretty easy to get along with, as long as you don't cross them and as long as you don't make a mockery of sacred Genre Law. But if that's how you wanna roll, do it at your own risk. Just saying.

Okay. Harbinger Duty complete; let's get on to all the groovy books I found in this exceptionally groovy bookstore that does indeed honor all Bookstore Deities, major, middlin' and minor and had a horror section with shelves stacked three deep.

---

Now I almost named this BsS post's title after this book, it being a sequel to Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and all, but "Bookstore Saturday: Evolution" just sounded dumb to me. So I picked a sequel suffix out of a hat and went with "Electric Boogaloo" instead. Because "electric boogaloo" is such an amazing word combination that it could never sound dumb. Ever.

Can't say I've actually seen the original Breakin' film let alone its sequel. But my sister has.

So I do have the original Crichton novel on my shelf, but it's been a long time since I've read it and I think I'll be giving it a revisit before I jump into this one.

I think this is the newest one of the haul, this time. 2019, it was published. Clearly the publisher decided to bank on Crichton's name over the fellow who actually wrote this book. Daniel H. Wilson is a readily recognizable name to me, but I suppose Crichton does have him beat as far as whole-world-recognition. For NOW.

Still I might be a tiny bit miffed to toil away at a novel and then have my name down at the bottom in wee font. Probably Mr. Wilson is a better man than I and has no issue.

At any rate, I've read three or four other books by Daniel Wilson and loved them, so I've got no fear in me about whether or not I'll enjoy this once I do get to it.

---

Okay, so John Saul is a reasonable bet with most of his books, but then you show me (almost) any book with the word "creature" for its title and I'm on the hook.

That being said, I'll be pretty darn surprised if I don't get into this one and realize I'd already read it back in the day. At first I was thinking it's the novel they based the 80s Watchers film off of, but pretty quickly realized than was Koontz, not Saul.

Still. Looks awfully familiar, front and back. It's older; first published in 1989. But... it didn't ring enough of a bell for me not to slap it into my book basket anyway. So we'll see...

Uh, front cover is giving me... Football Ape-man vibes. Those aren't two words I'd expect to go together... That back cover blurb has me cheering in the stands, though.

For one thing, we got that "rebuild him" bit in there. That appeals to my cyborg-love-ness. Then they've got the "won't hurt him again... they won't dare." Boohwaaauughaaauuughaaauuugh!

Huh. I was going for a kind of maniacal laugh there, but it sounds more like someone is choking or something. Anyway. Next book.

---

Oooooh... I love me a good Evil Kid book or movie. And what's better than just a standalone-all-on-his-own Evil Kid? (Why, Evil Twins, of course!)

And bonus points for kids who don't just settle for sociopath-evil but really go the distance to be supernatural-evil. 

Like these two apparently are.

Haven't heard of this author before, even after digging down through the pen names (Rosalind Erskine; Laura Black; Ivor Drummond; Frank Parrish; Domini Taylor; Megan Barker and Grania Beckford) to find one Roger Longrigg. I'm excited for this one, too.

I think this is probably the oldest of what I picked up this time - first published in 1984 although mine's a couple of years newer. Peter and Pandora. I mean, Peter's fine but you'd think the girl's name alone would be enough to warn you off...

---

Okay. Next up.

If you know me at all you know it was the word "golem" that got me to pick this one up for a closer look. I love a good (or not so good) man made men story. Before tossing it into my basket, I really just checked to make sure it wasn't some police procedural with some serial killer that some newspapermen were calling "the golem" or whatever. 

That would be lame.

But, between those font and back cover blurbs it seems a safe bet it's got some sweet supernatural shenanigans going for it. This one's more recent, published in 2014.

Also, these guys are a father and son writing team. On the father's end, I wanna say I've maybe heard of his Alex Delaware character? But can't say I've read anything from either of these fellows before.

Oh, and if this one IS a good read, there's a sequel...

---

Nature does make mistakes. And Big Bird says that is a-okay.

Not sure why I grabbed this one. I mean, I picked it up because it looked like some kind of creature feature and I'm a sucker for 'em. But I'm not as big on cryptids as I am on more standard fare - killer regular animals or killer giant regular animals or animals being messed with by science-hubris with terrible results. 

Still, this could be a good read. It's fairly recent - got a 2016 date on it.

Actually, cryptid-wise, I took this guy to be Mothman at first. Don't know too much about Mothman, but he's my pal River's favorite cryptid, so I know a little about him. 

Know next to nothing about the Jersey Devil.

Ohhh. Hunter Shea. Thought that name sounded familiar. I've totally read at least two others of his books. Pretty good.

---

Well, I'm always on the lookout for a decent werewolf novel. I say "decent" because, like werewolf movies, there are fewer out there than other classic monsters enjoy, and what there is tends (also like their film counterparts) to run a little subpar. 

So decent is good enough; I'll take it. Here's hopin'.

This one was actually the third or fourth werewolf novel in the horror section, but damned if the others weren't all of the paranormal romance variety, of which I am not a fan. Not a fan of romance in general (book-wise - I do love a quality film romance or rom-com) let alone paranormal romance novels.

But this one looks to be pretty romance-free so I'm giving it a try.

Hadn't heard of Ray Garton, and looking him up it seems he died fairly recently. Also seems he had a long and prolific career as a horror writer. So this pick-up is looking better and better.

And speaking of werewolves getting short shrift, the author himself feels just about like I do on the subject.

This one is from 2008, and it also has a sequel, so if it hits the spot I can seek out the followup.

Well then.

---

Sea Horror. Mmmmmmm. 

This one was another no brainer to put in the cart. It was published in 1999 - just squeaking by as a 90s horror novel. Can't really tell much about particulars from the cover and blurbs, but I'm happy to take my chances it'll be at least fair and hopefully more than.

James Powlik apparently is an oceanographer who also writes! Good combination, I say. Ooh, and he has a giant tsunami thriller as well. Guess I'll be giving that one a try, too.

But. Only a slight downer - while looking up the author's details, I inadvertently discovered this book is about deadly algae blooms. Which doesn't sound very exciting. But I'm still down to give it a go. I still am.

---

More Sea Horror! Mmmmmmm.

Look, I'm not gonna just assume that algae bloom up there isn't a good read, but this next sea horror (from 2003 in case you wuz wundrun) has an eyeball, which probably means it has teeth and wants to eat us. 

So that's good. Kind of looks like an otter eye. I didn't just buy a book about killer hairless otters, did I? Probably not. Anyway, we shall see once I get to this one.

Ooh. This author looks like he might have some other stuff to check out as well. Bunch of sea thrillers. Bunch of regular thrillers. Bunch of mysteries. Sweet.

Oh. Author research also gave me the sea horror's identity here - sounds like it's an unknown species of dolphin. Which sounds more exciting than algae. Or otters.

It shall be interesting...

---

And, we finish up with the good old tried and true man of steel. Hard to go wrong, here. And this is the only nonfiction book I picked up this time around. I've actually got... probably several... Superman histories of one kind or another, but I'm always down for one more.

This is from 2012, and author Larry Tye looks to also be a journalist, and has a pretty eclectic bibliography. I think this one'll be a fun read too. Maybe give me some info not already rattling around my head on the subject.

Wow. Looks like the book has endorsements from no less than Noel Neill, Jack Larson and Richard Donner. ( ! ) 

That's sayin' somethin'.

---

And that about wraps it up. Bookstore Saturday Success (BsSS)! 

If you like books, or bookstores, or are just super bored, you can read some other Bookstore Saturday shenanigans here. 

You are lucky.

---

Ice Sharks (2016) & Planet of the Sharks (2016)

So there I was, sifting through the new arrivals for Amazon Prime on the TV set.

With the missus out for the evening, I figured it was time for a little popcorn and a Dan Movie, "Dan Movie" being defined as any of the admittedly few films the missus just can't bring herself, in all her love and good-naturedness, to sit through alongside me as I watch. (And who knows, she might've been up for at least one of these two if she'd been home. But I kind of doubt it.)

Anyway, while sifting, I came across these two titles sitting right next to each other in the list. And since both looked like they might pass the minimum bar I hold for shark movies (i.e. any sharks portrayed are more or less of a natural state--not undead, roboticized, etc.--and also limit themselves to life in the water--no sand or snow burrowing, no sustained flying about in the air, and so on), I decided to give the trailers a watch. And I was actually excited when I did.

Why was I excited? Well, it wasn't because either movie appeared to be that (apparently mythical) film I've been looking for ever since the summer of 1975: a shark movie that holds even a dim, flickering candle to Jaws. No, neither of these looked to have particularly watertight (*NPI) plots, outstanding effects or remarkable performances. Even so, I was excited. The reason is, watching their trailers, I realized both movies actually take themselves and their audiences (kind of) seriously. And it is not often, my friend, that a shark movie does that.
*No Pun Intended

Well, now that I say it, I guess The Shallows was serious. And Bait 3D at least worked hard trying to be serious. But c'mon, you gotta admit the vast, vast majority of recent shark films have not only been atrocious but have run an exceedingly narrow gamut between tongue-firmly-in-cheek and outright parody. (And I'm sorry but I just cannot do tongue-in-cheek, let alone parody, with a shark movie. I just can't.)

To be sure, these two films have their shark-related gimmicks. Going completely gimmick-free is (apparently) more than I can hope for, but these films come closer than most have done in quite awhile. At the very least, there's no mention of sharks being whipped around inside tornadoes, swimming under the soil, having 2 or even 3 heads, and there were no sharktopuses, sharkensteins or airliner-snatching mega sharks to be seen anywhere. These movies pretty much stick (again, for the most part) to sharks. The kind that just swim. In the water. And like I said, both movies played it reasonably straight, to boot. No (excessive) actor-hamming, no breaking the fourth wall, etc.

I can't say any of the actors in either film are people I've seen anywhere else, and according to IMDB most of their collective work has been in movies of similar vein, but I also didn't get a sense that anyone involved was noticeably untalented. I admit there was a little watch checking going on during both films as they chugged along to their respective climaxes, but I think the mild impatience I experienced at times was more related to plotting than performances. I could see pretty much everybody in front of the cameras producing decent work, providing they had the right creative teams around them. At any rate, I was damn grateful to have any shark movie to watch which wasn't blatantly farcical.

So here's a bit about each film, and I honestly think you could do worse than give them a watch some weekend, when you're already bored and not particularly worried about losing that few hours of your life these movies will take and never give back.

---

Ice Sharks

So the deal here is there are a bunch of folks at an arctic research station who come across (or get camed across by) a "previously unknown variation" of Greenland sharks, lured in from who knows where due to global warming. Well, these sharks (unlike your garden variety Greenland shark) can swim at speeds of more than one mile per hour and will ravenously attack anything on, in or near the water.

Oh, and they're pack animals, too. Wolf-like, the sharks work together to separate and snack on our heroes, who eventually end up sunken (in their mostly air tight station) on the ocean floor, with hungry sharks all around them. Shenanigans and plot holes abound, until eventually those destined to survive do (survive I mean).

So yeah, nothing like that beast on the poster, but there are some twenty plus footers in the movie, and apparently that's accurate for the species in real life. Not that the filmmakers tried especially hard to have these things look life-like, a good thing, since real-world Greenlands are pretty unassuming in spite of their size. As you see below.

You can also see that the movie's sharks don't entirely stay in the water. That's okay, they don't in the next movie either. It's all still a damn site better than witnessing the horror that was Sharknado....

Unassuming Real Greenland Shark

Deadly Ice Sharks Greenland Shark

TWO AND A HALF EYE-PARASITE BRAINS

You'll have to do a little research to be in the know on that parasite reference. Oh, and nice callback to John Carpenter's 1982 take on The Thing, what with this movie's rescue ship crew all being named after Carpenter's (and the original novella's) arctic research crew. Well done, with that.

---

Planet of the Sharks

Well the culprit here is (again) global warming: it's melted all the polar ice and 98% of the planet is underwater. Most of the planet's human population has died out, and those left have adapted to life on top of the water in the form of boats and little towns made from tied-together rafts.

Some scientist types have scrounged together just enough technological scraps to have a go at launching a whatzit into the upper atmosphere, which they hope will reverse the warming and refreeze the ice caps to get a little more land mass available for everyone. (Yeah, the "science" in the film is a little dubious, but I'm rolling with it.)

Unfortunately, about this time it becomes apparent some sharks (at least the one we see in this movie) have evolved to be able to control other sharks via some kind of hive mind, and as a result sharks have learned to attack and kill people on top of the water by leaping out and knocking the intended victim into the water. And then munching upon them.

So anyway, stuff happens and people windsurf while being chased by highly-evolved-alpha-sharks and scientists eventually save the planet as alpha sharks are destroyed and land does indeed (eventually) reappear as credits roll.

Alpha Sharks have glowey ampullae of Lorenzini...

...and make other sharks do this.

So yeah. This one wasn't quite as good, overall, as Ice Sharks. But it was watchable. In the right circumstances (like the ones I was in). No super obvious character callouts this time (both films were made by the same company, so I thought there might be), although we did get a character named Dr. Roy Shaw, which has gotta be an amalgam of Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw, doesn't it? (Although I suppose whoever named the character might've also just been a fan of this guy.) And then we get a Dr. Caroline Munroe, which I figure has to be a Hammer Horror reference, right? Not that Hammer ever made a shark movie (and not that she was only ever in Hammer films, but she never did a shark film at all, far as I know). Yeah. So anyway.

TWO GLOWEY ALPHA BRAINS

Wer (2013) & Howl (2015)

Alrighty then! Just watched me a couple werewolf movies, and thought I'd share so you can do it too. (I'm terribly considerate that way.) Both movies are recent low-budget indies and, with the ungodly plethora of crap werewolf films out there, they're both worth a few of your bucks and some of your time. You most likely will not be sorry. (I wasn't.)

---

  Wer

So. The quick and dirty here is this was American made, shot in Romania, but takes place in France (three countries for the price of one!). It kind of goes the lycanthropy-as-medical-condition route. Hmm, maybe not totally, now that I think about it. But more so than not.

Anyway. Plot-wise, we've got an American expat attorney who's pro bono-ing for this backwoods French-by-way-of-Romania fellow. He's accused of slaughtering and eating a family of campers. Expat Attorney is convinced there's no way this guy could've done it, since he suffers from some disease that makes him extremely weak and severely limits his mobility. Total no-brainer, right? (The wise answer to this question would be "No, totally not a no-brainer.")

Werewolf Man is portrayed as a decent, backwards kind of guy, who's surely not getting any enjoyment from turning into a ravenous beast and eating people. As far as it goes, he doesn't turn into much of a beast at all.

Well, he does. Plenty of ripping and tearing and eating of human beings going on, here. What I mean is he doesn't look particularly beast-like. The guy is hairy with bad teeth before wolfing-out, and possibly a little hairier and teethier afterward. It's actually kind of hard to tell. I'd have to go back and check to make sure. Which, being on a time budget (hate those), I'm not doing.

Anyway, Werewolf Man hits all the usual beats here: escapes, wreaks havoc, kills a lot of people and infects another guy so we can have a werewolf showdown for the finale. And it all works pretty well. Small budget done right, if you ask me.

Not much in the way of werewolf makeup going on, but what they do is effective. I'm assuming the actor playing him isn't that hairy and bad teethy in real life (and if the teeth are his, no offense intended), so makeup looks to be some added hair (not fur), pointy teeth (not fangs) and bloodshot eyes. But if that sounds dull to you, give it a watch.

Not dull.

THREE HAIRY-NOT-FURRY BRAINS

---

  Howl

I think I may favor this movie just the tiniest bit over that first one. Not that I think it's better necessarily, just more character-driven, which I happen to like in a film. It's just as low-budget (Well, maybe a little more money moving around this set.) Whatever they did, money-wise, it worked.

This one's British, and takes place in a forest outside London. Plot-wise, we get a trainload of workers and passengers trapped on a stalled-out train in the woods between stops, and multiple werewolves to menace them.

The movie's protagonist is your basic decent-but-constantly-shat-upon-by-the-establishment type, who hero's up in the end. And while the passengers are all stereotypes of one sort or another, they're fun-to-watch stereotypes, played and directed well by all those folks doing their in-front-of-and-behind-camera jobs.

This is definitely a scarier movie. Which again, is not a putdown of Wer. Both enjoyable, just really different from one another. Hard to compare the two, really.

Anyway, the werewolves here are a little more werewolf-like, but in a way that steers clear of all those stereotypes. Very feral, not a lot of fur, great big teeth pretty much sums 'em up.

See?

THREE  MORE-TEETH-THAN-GOD-INTENDED BRAINS

---

So yeah. Pick both these movies up, along with a soda, and you're in for a solid evening of entertainment. (Adding popcorn would make it really solid.)

Nuff said.

Thale (2012)

This is a seriously underrated little film. 

I don't know how many people even came across it--it mostly played festivals, with a few (really) limited general releases thrown in. But it's more than worth the price-of-rental and 76 minutes it takes to watch it. And true to form, I'm gonna spoil all its secrets if you keep reading. I'm just saying, that's how I roll.

So the thing was shot in Norway, by a guy named Aleksander Nordaas, for a total cost of $10,000. (Cheap!) Not that you would know that as you watched it. I've seen (so) many five or ten million dollar films that came off so much worse than this one. 

Wait. I'm making it sound like the film is just okay but there are worse ones out there, which is not what I mean at all. What I mean is this is a good film, and there are a lot of people out there who've spent a hundred times more money making really bad films.

Of course, Nordaas directed, wrote, produced, edited, worked the camera, built the sets and acted as cinematographer, so that saved a lot of money right there. Plus, he shot most of it in his dad’s basement. But the point I'm belaboring making is you'd never guess all that if you hadn't looked it up before or after the fact.

So. On to the movie itself.

Right off the bat we meet Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard). Leo apparently runs a crime scene cleanup business and Elvis, his buddy, is tagging along to make a little extra cash (I'm guessing). We know this is not Elvis' usual line of work because he spends this entire first-scene-interspersed-with-opening-credits vomiting. A lot. In detail. So if onscreen vomiting really gets to you, it'd be a good scene to avert your eyes in. Not that anyone finds onscreen vomiting particularly enjoyable, but if you're especially bothered by it, eye averting is good here.

Elvis the Vomiter (L) and Leo the Crime Scene Cleaner (R)

Anyway, it's worth noting these guys are way out in the middle of nowhere, cleaning up this little mountain cabin where someone has apparently been murdered. No idea how crime scene stuff works in Norway, but they're zipping a guy up into a body bag and cleaning up all this blood and gore. Have cops even been there? Wouldn't a coroner have taken the body away before these guys ever showed up? No idea. But anyway that's what they're doing.

We get a POV flashback scene (lots of those in this movie) where someone we can't see but who we'll call Talking Man is walking through a snow covered forest and talking to someone else we can't see about how he wishes things had turned out differently, and what happens now depends on "them," and so forth. We pass by a cave entrance and Talking Man says something about "that's where I found you, nine years ago. I wish I'd left you there." And we get this quick flashback-within-a-flashback shot of a creepy-not-quite-human-baby, laying there all shrouded in cave darkness. Eek.

In case we had come upon this movie unaware it was a horror film, now we know.

Then we're back to present day and mostly no longer vomiting Elvis. And Leo, too. (I mean Leo is also there. He was never vomiting.) So everything's pretty much cleaned up by now, and Elvis (even though Leo says don't go messing around touching things) starts messing around and touching things. He finds a hidden basement entrance outside, around back of the cabin, and (even though Leo says don't go in there and start touching things) goes in there and starts touching things.

It's a creepy place, with big jars full of formaldehyde-y body parts and stuff, and they (Leo keeps saying stay out but he's as curious as the next guy) find a room with a big tub full of viscous white fluid and a workbench. On the workbench is an old style cassette tape recorder and a bunch of tapes. Elvis can't help but put one in and give it a listen.

I'm not touching, I'm listening....

So the tapes are all of Talking Man (who we never meet and whose body I assume was being zipped up in that bag we saw earlier) telling his story. Elvis is listening away while Leo pokes around in some other room, when all of a sudden a naked woman (who we'll find out later is Thale (Silje Reinamo), the movie's titular character) comes busting out of that fluid-filled bathtub, scaring poor Elvis half to death.

Boo!

Gah!

She's as freaked out as Elvis is and grabs him in a choke hold that he's not gonna live through if she keeps at it, but Leo rushes in and talks her down. She seems to understand Norwegian but apparently doesn't speak, herself. Well, Leo's all like "what are we gonna do now, this is an active crime scene, I gotta go call my boss" and Elvis is like "hey, grab those rolls outta the car while you're at it, this girl looks hungry." So Leo hikes down to the car and that's where we see our first monster, lurkishly skittering (or skitterishly lurking, definitely both happening) across the road as Leo's getting the bad news that his boss is gonna be hours and hours before getting there.

Yikes!

Great. Stuck up in the mountains with monsters that you don't even know are there. This is bad. So. Back at the cabin, Thale (pronounced like you're Canadian and someone says "wow that guy is at least seven foot six" and you reply "tall, eh"?) is pounding down this bag of rolls Leo brought back from the car and the guys are realizing she's been here on her own for awhile, living off a bunch of canned food and bottled water that's pretty much gone at this point. So it's a good thing they came along when they did, right?

Well, we've gotten a little vague backstory on Thale from these tapes Elvis is listening to, but we still don't really know who or what she is and why she's hiding out in this cabin. At one point, Talking Man mentions on one of his tapes that he's surprised at how human-esque Thale is, and it must be her species' ability to adapt to their surroundings at work. Hmm. Anyway, it sounds like she and Talking Man were on the run, hiding from somebody, but we're not sure who. Is Talking Man a kidnapping bad guy? Is he a rescuing good guy? We don't know and Thale's definitely not saying.

After awhile Elvis stops listening to tapes long enough to notice Thale's no longer in the room, and does a bit more exploring to find her in (yet another) hidden room. This one's all done up like a little girl's bedroom, and Thale's hiding under a bed in there, looking all scared and confused. Elvis, being a kind soul, lays down on the floor next to her and tries to soothe her. When she reaches out and touches his face, he has this weird little seizure-y thing, and he's suddenly seeing flashbacks from different times in her life. And thus we learn that while she doesn't talk, she doesn't need to because she can communicate telepathically.

Elvis gets a little more information than he asked for.

In the flashback we see a younger Thale with Talking Man, finding and setting up shop in the cabin, then we see an older Thale wandering out of the cabin one night and getting a glimpse one of those creature-y things we saw on the road earlier, before Talking Man grabs her and takes her back inside. He performs some kind of unanesthetized surgery on her, telling her he knows they call to her but if she goes with them, "the others" will find her and that will not be good. He says some kind of energy or waves are emanating from her and hopes removing whatever he's removing will keep that from happening so neither group finds her again.

Okay, we all know it's a tail he's cutting off, right? It's right there on that movie poster up top. Apparently Thale is one of these forest things we've been catching glimpses of, but she looks more human due to being raised by humans. (Really, she looks more human 'cause $10,000 is not nearly enough money to let you do a movie's main character in CGI.) So sure enough, a minute or two later we see Elvis and Leo opening up a freezer and there's a tail in there.

Eeew.

Now both guys are a little freaked out by this point, but it only gets worse: all of a sudden there are sneaky rustlings outside. Somethings definitely out there. Apparently Thale knows what it is. She jumps up, locks the basement door, and hides in the corner. Elvis and Leo are still trying to figure out what's going on when they realize some kind of gas is being pumped in through the door's keyhole. Just as Elvis is passing out, he reaches out and touches Thale's foot, which gives him (and us) another flashback to fill in the last of her story. Basically, we just see her meet one of her own kind and then realize how different she is from caregiver Talking Man.

Flashback-Thale finally meets up with her own kind...

...and notices the biggest difference between her and that human anatomy book she's reading.

Oh. And I should mention that right before the gas started flowing, Leo was in-process of telling Elvis that he's been diagnosed with cancer and only has a few months to live, as Thale looks on. It's kind of a weird scene that has a tacked on feeling and I'm not sure the movie really needs it, but there it is.

So Leo and Elvis are in a bad way.

Turns out it was a bunch of black ops types feeding that gas through the keyhole, and now both guys are outside, tied to chairs and blindfolded. Leo is still unconscious, and Elvis is being interrogated by The Bad Guy as his minions search the cabin for Thale. Bad Guy fills in what Talking Man hasn't already given us, that Thale was found as an infant and taken by this black ops government group for nefarious study purposes. At some point Talking Man, one of the group himself, grew a conscience and ran off with her to try and give her a better life. They've been villainously looking for her ever since.

I'm not sure I caught (or that he actually said), during his Bad Guy Monologue, how Talking Man died. If these guys had done it, they'd already have searched the cabin for Thale, right? Maybe those forest critters we've been getting all the glimpses of broke in and got him. I don't know.

Minions

The Bad Guy

So back in the cabin (which is really pretty small), no one can seem to find Thale. Until she rears up out of that fluid-filled tub and kills them all, that is. Turns out she's really fast, really strong, and really determined not to go with them. The minions don't stand a chance.

No pun intended with that "rears up out of" stuff. But it worked out great anyway, didn't it?

Necks are fragile.

Do. Not. MESS. With her.

Yes, she really did just shove a rifle through that guy's chest.

So we get a few minutes of awesome Killer-Thale-Action inside, interspersed with less awesome but still interesting Bad-Guy-Exposition outside, until Thale finishes off the minions by poking a hole in their gas tank and running like mad. Explosions ensue.

"Oh sh-" KABOOOOOOM!

"That can't be good," thinks Bad Guy.

So Bad Guy figures it's time to cut his losses and get the hell out of here. He whips out a big gun and points it at Elvis, just in time to realize he's not going to make it home for dinner. Or ever. Seems a few of Thale's sisters were lurking about in the trees nearby, and have decided to show him what they think of people who steal defenseless babies from caves. Which is not only satisfying to watch, but gives us some of the best monster shots of the film, so here are a few screenshots for your viewing pleasure. Okay, the monster shots came off better in-motion, but you get the idea.

Going from Large and In Charge...

...to I May Not Have Thought This Through as Well as I Should Have.

Ask rifle-through-the-chest-man how helpful that pistol will be.

Forest Critters prepare to make a Bad Guy sandwich.

Elvis is really appreciating his blindfold about now.

thisisnothappeningthisisnothappeningiamdreamingiamdreaming

Our work is done, here, sisters. Away!

Well, bad guys are dead and monsters are gone, but what ever happened to Thale? She's around, we find out, as she steals over to just waking Leo and touches his chest before melting into the forest for good. All that's left now is for the guys to be rescued (off-screen) and explain all those bodies to their boss, as he types up the report.

Ah, so that's what she was....

Probably Norwegian audiences already knew this, but I didn't. Hulder is "a seductive forest creature found in Scandinavian folklore." From what little information I found online, female huldrefolk are "seductively beautiful," so I'm not sure what this movie's whole furry forest demon thing was about. One site mentioned something about shape-shifting, so maybe some of that's what was going on here, with Thale shape-shifting from animal to human.

Anyway, last couple scenes are an epilogue, with Leo discovering that Thale's last touch before she ran off cured his cancer, and then Thale waking up in a forest and following a bunch of other huldrefolk off into the trees. With her kind at last for a happy ending and all that. My question is will she continue to look human or revert to her natural state? And will she ever grow that tail back? Enquiring minds want to know.

Maybe the sequel will tell us.

And now for a little secret: My knee-jerk right after I watched it was to give this movie three brains. I thought "That was fun. I probably won't watch it again, though." And while that's still more or less true, learning what I did about it's cost and going back through looking for screenshots, I realized even if I don't seek it out for repeat viewing the way I do some films, I'd definitely re-watch if it ever showed up on TV or if I and a friend who hadn't seen it were looking for a good fantasy thriller to pass the time with. Heck, I might watch it all on my own again, as well.

Anyway. Point being, I decided to up the film's brain count from its initial three to what I think is a well deserved count of FOUR SCANDINAVIAN FOREST CREATURE BRAINS. So there.