Review: The Wave

The Wave (15)

Norway 2015  103 mins Subtitles  Dir: Roar Uthaug Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Edith Haagenrud-Sande

Norway’s official submission to this year’s Oscars, and that country’s highest-grossing film of 2015, cleaves closely to the Hollywood disaster movie formula but unfolds in a novel, strikingly beautiful setting.

We’re in the stunning tourist village of Gereigner, western Norway, whose fjord is overlooked by the vertiginous Akerneset mountain, as lovingly caressed by director Roar Uthaug’s camera. One day, the bloody great rock face will collapse into the fjord, generating a deadly 80 metre-high tsunami. The residents will then have just 10 minutes to scarper to higher ground. This much is fact, and the archive footage of the film’s opening scenes reminds us that just such a disaster occured as recently as 1905.

Meticulous, somewhat dishevelled 40-year-old geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is a key member of the team charged with monitoring the mountain for any movement signalling that a rockslide is imminent. Should this happen, there’s a big red button to push which sets off honking sirens all over town. Interestingly, no one seems to have given any thought to what might happen if everybody attempts to flee simultaneously up the narrow, winding mountain road, but that’s a handy plot point for later on.

Kristian is equipped with the standard-issue nuclear family. Wifey Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) works as a receptionist in the resort’s grand hotel. The couple have a skateboarding teenage son named Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and the mandatory adorable blonde moppet, Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande), who carries a stuffed toy bunny rabbit with her wherever she goes. Awww. Now hurry up with that drowning…

It also goes without saying that this is Kristian’s last day on the job before he uproots his family from their idyllic home overlooking the fjord to take a boring big city job with an oil company. But wait – what’s this? The sensors embedded in the rock face are reporting some funny readings. It could be nothing. Or it could be The Big One. In a knowing echo of Mayor Larry Vaughn in Spielberg’s Jaws, Kristian and his team are under plenty of pressure not to trigger a false alarm at the height of the tourist season. Now it only remains for the scriptwriters to divide the family in two and unleash nature’s fury in the middle of the night.

The CGI rockslide and tsunami aren’t exactly state-of-the-art, but they’re good enough. In the wake of the catastrophe, everything goes all The Poseidon Adventure/Titanic underwater and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center up above. Uthaug loses no opportunity to wring every once of tension from his well-orchestrated set-up – although he goes perhaps a little too far in the final scenes, which may have cynics muttering, “Oh, come off it!” As a Tinseltown calling card, it has undoubtedly worked: he’s just been assigned the Tomb Raider reboot, making it marginally less uneagerly anticipated than before.