Cert 15 116mins Stars 2

Lesbian lust and psychic power are unable to this save this Norwegian horror thriller from it’s self induced torpidity.

Eili Harboe offers a sympathetic fragility as Thelma, a socially anxious first year university student.

She becomes obsessed with the beautiful and popular Anja with whom she begins a tender relationship.

Thelma’s heightened emotional state manifests itself as a supernatural force. This results in her suffering seizures, minor electrical shortages, and the occasional crow colliding with a window.

Snakes make a penetrating appearance in Thelma’s dreams but possess insufficient poison or bite. Weighed down by sincerity and self importance, there’s an absence of camp energy which would make this nonsense fun to swallow.

The virtues of ungodly metropolitan lifestyles are expressed in opposition those of Christian small towns, and pharmaceutical medicine presented as a barrier to female emancipation.

Witchcraft challenges science as reality, flashbacks and fantasy mesh, and as it becomes hard to distinguish one from another, any potential magic is lost.