Metacritic reviews

Trier crafts a drama that is sublimely ambiguous, austere and also deeply sad and heartbreaking.

Here, the Norwegian’s filmmaker’s signature brand of existential dread (always coupled with and complicated by a youthful sense of becoming), is expressed through style more than action. This isn’t a movie where all that much happens, but every decision ripples with darkness.

While the more enigmatic supernatural elements at times veer close to formulaic Hollywood horror tropes, the movie maintains a compelling seriousness, particularly in its consideration of the conflict between sexuality and repression.

At times a tad too subtle, Thelma is nonetheless an unnervingly effective slow-burn, and those with the patience for Trier’s patient accumulation of detail will find it pays off in unexpected ways.

In Thelma, Trier tries his hand at making a straight-up genre film — a love story between two women cloaked in a supernatural thriller. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Trier’s knack for nuance and graceful storytelling marries beautifully to a tender drama about self-discovery spiked with psychokinesis.

Even if Trier doesn’t have much new to say about oppressive religious belief, childhood trauma or the terror of adolescent hormones, Thelma’s sustained, muted uneasiness gives this genre exercise sufficient gusto.

Trier’s first foray into the fantastic—his college Carrie—gets stuck in an odd middle ground: It’s at once too metaphorically muddled and too dramatically straightforward.

There's too much undeniably impressive filmmaking to dismiss Thelma; there's too much uncertain storytelling to actually recommend it. Trier undoubtedly has a great horror-movie character study in him. We can't wait to see it.

The disappointment with this film is in how it feels like a betrayal of the skills which made him stand out amongst many of his contemporaries. Empathy is in sight with the film’s subject, but never really felt due to a certain distance.

Thelma's transition into a paranormal thriller doesn’t complicate its initially potent character study.