The Wave (Bølgen)
There is an inevitability about a disaster movie: the audience know it will happen, and frequently at least one of the characters knows it will happen, though most often none of those around will listen despite the warnings and the mounting evidence. It’s just a question of when the shoe will drop, what preparations have been made, and how closely they will adhere to the instructions which they have been taught.
The difference with Roar Uthaug’s The Wave, finally on limited UK release after its Norwegian debut last year and a screening at Glasgow Film Festival’s Fright Fest in February, is that it already has happened many times even in the relatively recent history of Norway, at Loen in 1905, at Tafjord in 1934 and Loen again in 1936, and the chances are that it will happen again.
Opening with a montage of vintage newsreels from throughout the previous century, the death tolls in each incident mounting through the flickering black and white images, the contract to the picturesque and peaceful village Geiranger at the head of the Geirangerfjord could not be marked, traditional houses, open roads, clean air, the water of the fjord deep and still, but above it sits the deadly possibility of Åkerneset.
An unstable mountain face constantly monitored for the slightest movements in the crevasse which penetrates deep into the towering rocks and changes in the water table of the surrounding areas, on his last day at the Gerainger Early Warning Centre before departing for a new job in the city Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner of The Revenant and Død Snø 2) infuriates his family and his more conservative colleagues by forcing an inspection of the monitoring equipment.
Having missed the ferry, Kristian and his young daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) will spend the night at their now empty home while his son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) takes a room at the luxury tourist hotel where his mother Idun (Død Snø‘s Ane Dahl Torp) is finishing her last night shift, but while the residents sleep, the mountain wakes…
Written by John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg and directed by Roar Uthaug, now attached to 2018’s Tomb Raider reboot, the film is foreboding, signs in everything Kristian sees from the webs of sensors across the rocky crags to the sudden nocturnal flight of birds awoken by the shifting pressures beneath their roosts, but it is frustrating how slowly those trained for emergencies react, both at the Centre and the hotel.
Effective despite the narrative shortcomings which deploy the standard disaster movie tropes of a missing child then a panicking survivor endangering those around them, both the descent into the mountain and the countdown to the arrival of the flood at Geiranger are impressive and terrifying in equal overwhelming measure, 100 million cubic metres of thundering water against which the only defence is to be above the wave when it arrives.
With Idun making it clear never to mess with a Viking momma, the small core cast performing their own underwater stunts in the most demanding conditions as the elegantly decorated lobby and halls of the hotel are engulfed by the deluge and there are moments which remind of Titanic though the aftermath more resembles a visit from Godzilla, mainstream touchstones which should open it to a wider audience often dissuaded by anything with subtitles.
The Wave is now on limited release
