Disaster movies are great – The Day After Tomorrow, Into The Storm and Contagion are great American blockbuster examples of disasters done well but The Wave is an exception and a welcome one at that. The Wave is an Norwegian movie, which was put forward as Norway’s selection for Best Foreign Picture at the 2016 Academy Awards (unfortunately it was not nominated). It feels and sounds and looks like an average disaster movie, other than the fact that it isn’t in English and is set in the stunning location of Geiranger, a true life Norwegian village, which is under constant threat from the Geirangerfjord.
Although there are many similarities between The Wave and those films that came before it, this film directed by Roar Uthaug (who is currently working on the Tomb Raider reboot), ultimately feels fresh, terrifying and so much more real than many other disaster movies. The film looks to develop many of the traditional American conventions of this genre whilst giving it the stunning real life setting in Norway. Another development within The Wave is that the film very clearly makes the main characters of the film, the family that the audience follow throughout.
Usually with these films, the disaster is the main character and the actual people affected often become secondary to special effects and prolonged disaster moments but in The Wave, Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner) and his family, Idun Karlsen (Ane Dahl Torp), Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro) and Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande) are the centre of attention. The film makes them real characters rather than simple tropes of characters, which the audience become invested in – the audience actively join their journey of coming back together once the tsunami hits.
Kristian is a local geologist who works at a station above sea level, monitoring the rock of the fjord. He has 
recently gotten a new office job away from this small village and, along with his family, is due to leave behind everyone they know for a new life. He is clearly excited that he gets to move away but at the same time is finding it difficult to leave behind everything – his family are taking it even harder. On the day that he is due to move, Kristian notices something suspicious about the rock movements and orders that his old teammates take a look. If something were due to happen, an alarm is pulled, which means the people living in the village have 10 minutes to get to safety by moving a certain height above sea level. His suspicions are correct and everyone’s lives, in the matter of minutes, are changed forever.
The wave within The Wave itself is spectacular, and teamed together with the tension that Uthaug and screenwriters, John Kåre Rake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg create both before and after the drama of the disaster makes this film really stand out as one of the top disaster movies of all time. It pulls the audience in with the story, gives an incredible crash when the wave strikes and then tells a fantastic story of the immediate aftermath. Kristian must get to the local hotel (whilst the rest of the village is now burning in ruins), where his wife Idun and son Sondre are stuck (they are in an underground bunker with water quickly seeping in) and here starts the second act of the story, where survival and rescue become the key elements.
An outstanding achievement in storytelling, challenging the conceptions about what happens when American style movies are made elsewhere and proving that the team working on The Wave are a force to be reckoned with. The Wave is more chilling and involving because of the characters that the audience become involved with – making the story about more than simply the disaster.
