The Wave review [LFF 2015]: “Exhilarating, engrossing, impressive”

The Wave review: A Roland Emmerich disaster movie with a 25th of the budget, and twice as much heart.

The Wave, aka Bølgen, or Norway does Roland Emmerich, is a new disaster epic that is set in the mountain pass of Åkneset above the scenic narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger (a beautiful place that actually exists in the west of the country).

Roar Uthaug takes the reigns of this really quite expensive looking movie that follows a geologist, Kristian, and his family as they are about to the leave their rural surroundings for the bright lights of the city, and a brand new job that requires Kristian to wear a suit and tie. Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) has packed up his house with his beautiful family; wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) and children Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) and Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro), and is on his way out of Geiranger, leaving his wife behind who has just a couple of days left to work. However, things don’t sit right in his mind as he approaches the departing ferry out-of-town after he is alerted to the slight movements of the towering mountains on his last shift at work. Turning around to visit his co-workers to warn of the potential incoming danger, which could leave to a catastrophic tsunami that would wipe out the town in a matter of minutes, Kristian manages to get stuck in town for the night, much to the dismay of his wife. When he leaves to ‘say goodbye to their old house’ with his daughter, leaving son Sondre to sulk with his wife, the inevitable happens, and the countdown to destruction begins.

What grabs you immediately by The Wave is the sheer enormity of it. We’re not talking about the tsunami, which is huge, but the scale of this film. From what we can see, The Wave was made for around 50m Norwegian Krone, which is a touch over £4 million. Not only is that completely crazy for what is put up on-screen, but actually quite impressive. Compare it to Hollywood’s recent disaster movie output, and you’ve got a film that has been made for a fraction of the cost. There are multiple CGI effects, which are well constructed (we’re not talking Sharknado standards here, but near Weta and ILM level), huge sets built for the aftermath of the wave’s destruction, and tons of extras used throughout.

Don’t get us wrong, The Wave is a pretty generic disaster movie, and ticks every box on the disaster movie-making check list, but it’s perfect. We have the tech bods who know things are about to go south, only here they’re resisting and the hero of the piece, Joner’s Kristian, is the man who has to return to convince them to stay alert and press the big red button. There’s the superb supporting characters and sub-plots that feed into the main story, and while they’re not as well-developed as we see in the usual Hollywood fare, they’re still absolutely fine. What this film does is concentrate more on the central family, and develop their characters so that we care about them, and no matter how clichéd the film gets (which it does in quite a few places), it doesn’t matter. What it does manage to do is bring a real European, Nordic noir to the piece, that makes it feel completely different to anything that we’ve seen in the genre before. The main characters don’t feel shallow – they feel very real, and we do actually care about them.

We were surprised by The Wave. A really solid ride that will grip you throughout. Already a hit in its homeland, we hope that the rest of the world gets to see this really accomplished, exciting piece of work, and that Hollywood calls upon this supremely talented filmmaker in Uthaug, who I would love to see do something with some money in his pocket.

The ultimate thrill ride that will have you on the edge of your seat throughout. Exhilarating, engrossing, impressive high-octane filmmaking, with a proper and realistic story at its heart.

The Wave review by Paul Heath, October 2015.

The Wave plays at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival. The film will be released in the UK and the USA in 2016.