It's great - but not what I expected. It's visually impeccable, as are the performances, and I don't think one could've asked for anything better than the job Hvistendahl has done in capturing the mood of the story. Don't expect it to be like the book, though. The characters and almost all of the scenes are familiar, but don't expect any of the grander scale or top-down perspectives of the novel - while a couple glimpses are shown of how Oslo at large reacts to the unexplainable, the film's perspective remains firmly leashed to the three main families throughout. Not sure how much I want to spoil, but, for example, the Fisher does not appear and the only supernatural element that's included is the initial awakening itself, which is left unexplained. Which is not a bad thing! The focus is on being a deliberately told, slow and small-scale story that puts the sorrow and understated horror of each of the characters' situations on the full display they deserve as the characters struggle to deal with loss and accept that their loved ones have irrevocably changed.
I think that, personally, my enjoyment was hampered a bit because I unintentionally (and unfairly) kept expecting it to escalate and race off in directions more similar to the novel, when in the end it goes in its own slightly different direction, so when the credits came up I got a bit of a "That's it?" feeling. This was not the movie's fault. If you go into it without any preconceived notions, I don't doubt that it'll succeed at being a haunting and emotionally gut-punching experience. To those who've been waiting for an adaptation of HTU for years, I would say that it was worth the wait.
