Disaster movies are quite possibly the most formulaic genre
put to film, and there’s a reason for that.
People go to these films to see special effects spectacles, but that
spectacle is rendered hollow and meaningless if it is not supported by
characters we care about. That’s a
mistake many modern American film studios make in producing disaster flicks,
relying on the tried-true archetypes of the patriarch and his family in need of
rescue, which not only have been played to death but are also starting to show
their misogynistic age. Enter The Wave, a Norwegian film that seeks to
emulate the uniquely American disaster flick genre, and somehow ends up
becoming one of the genre’s best examples in the last decade.
Our patriarch this time is Kristian, a geologist in the
village of Geiranger, Norway who is about to move with his family to a larger
city in order to work for an oil company.
During his last day on the job, some of his research station’s sensors
go offline to the bewilderment of his colleagues, but Kristian eventually
realizes that this is the harbinger of a mountain’s collapse that will cause a
tsunami to wipe out the tiny village.
His co-workers believe him to be overreacting, but soon enough the disaster
strikes, leaving Kristian to save his young daughter on an escape route out of
the city, and his wife Idun to protect their teenage son in a hotel within
Geiranger itself.
What The Wave does
remarkably well is build tension, using character drama to escalate conflict
between Kristian and Idun, as well as place Kristian as tragic figure talked
out of his foresight. These characters
aren’t necessarily that deep, but
they are example of how to use archetypes as a starting point for character
development rather than leave them as audience cyphers. The titular tsunami doesn’t even arrive until
halfway through the film, and I was never bored in the moments leading up to
that event. As for the wave itself, for
a film costing only $8 million, it looks a hell of a lot more convincing than
many Hollywood disaster flicks that cost more than ten times as much. The devastation feels real, which is necessary
and unfortunately lacking if most of this film’s brethren.
The Wave isn’t
without its faults though, and they are mostly due to the film’s continued
devotion to genre convention. After the wave
hits, Kristian’s journey to find his lost wife and son feels more than a little
aimless and contrived, though Idun’s struggle still remains compelling and even
shockingly violent, giving the two leads an appropriate balance of survival
chops regardless of gender. But by the
end of the film, the patriarch is still the one to save the day, and an
appropriately dark ending is supplanted by a saccharine climax that made my
eyes roll. Furthermore, for how much
character development took up the first half of the film, these characters
deserved much more of an epilogue than they received, the film cutting to
credits just after they are all reunited.
But for its faults, The
Wave is a surprisingly entertaining film.
It doesn’t transcend its chosen genre, but it knows how to use the
tropes of its genre effectively, and an entertaining movie is the result. If you can find a theater playing this
Norwegian film near you, I definitely recommend it for the water special
effects alone. It’s a fun time, nothing
more, nothing less.
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