The Wave US reception

On March 4th this year, Roar Uthaug’s disaster movie The Wave finally flooded American cinemas. The film has been mostly positively reviewed so far.

The Wave was not only Norway’s most popular film in 2015, it was also one of the most popular theatrical movies ever to screen in Norway. Now it is taking on US theatres (see the US poster on this page), and currently enjoying  a79% score (down from an initial 82%) at reviews aggregator RottenTomatoes. Here are some review excerpts:

• THE WAVE is a disaster movie making a big splash – New York Times
• I would argue that THE WAVE is a prime example of a return to quality, story-driven disaster genre filmmaking – We Are Movie Geeks
• THE WAVE, Scandinavia’s first-ever disaster film, is the polar opposite of a disaster. It’s a triumph of modest means, a tribute to the power of storytelling on a human scale. The special effects are sufficiently impressive, though nowhere near as special as the intimate sense of family and community that pulls us into the unfolding drama and never for a moment lets us go – The Wall Street Journal
• The Wave proves Hollywood has no monopoly on thrilling disaster flicks – A.V. Club
• Uthaug makes us care about this stalwart little family, and, more important, serves up a special-effects tsunami that’s both glorious and unsettling, a swoosh of doom in liquid form – Time
• Michael Bay, you just got schooled on how to make a disaster flick by the Norwegian upstarts behind The Wave – FilmForward
• Somewhere out there, Irwin Allen is either cursing them out in Norwegian or beaming like a proud papa – Rolling Stone
• Dear Hollywood, this is how it’s done – The Daily Beast
• Krstoffer Joner has a sort of hang-dog John Hawkes quality – Chicago Tribune
• His wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), one of those long-legged, no-makeup beauties that seem to spring up around fjord country like mutant wildflowers – Time
• Both Mr. Joner and Ms. Torp have somewhat protuberant eyes that make them a mirror for the audience, though as their characters swing into parental survivor mode you’re reminded that this is the land of the Vikings, from their resolve to their awesome man-crushing thighs – New York Times
• The Wave adds credible writing and effective acting to gangbusters special effects, resulting in a white-knuckle experience a bit higher on the plausibility scale than what we’re used to from Hollywood versions of the genre – LA Times
• The Wave delivers an inspired take on the natural disaster genre – IGN
• The Wave provides a little bit more – a little more intelligence, a little more drama, a little more character identification. These things are enough to more than compensate for the lower budget and to provide a fully realized, satisfying disaster movie experience – ReelViews

Real-life facts are the basis for the 5.8 million euro disaster movie which predicts what will happen if the mountain Åkneset crumbles into the Storfjord. In the film, the experienced geologist Kristian Eikfjord (Kristoffer Joner) has accepted a job offer out of town. He is getting ready to move from the city of Geiranger with his family, when he and his colleagues measure small geological changes in the underground. Kristian gets worried and his worst nightmare is about to come true, when the alarm goes off and the disaster is inevitable. With less than 10 minutes to react, it becomes a race against time in order to save as many as possible, including his own family.

More about the movie here.