Geologist Kristian Eikjord is working his final day in Geiranger before moving to Stavanger with his family, when sensors on the mountain indicate groundwater has disappeared at Åkerneset.
While waiting for the ferry with his children, Sondre and Julia, while his wife Idun works a few more days at the town hotel, Kristian has an epiphany and rushes back to the geology center, leaving his children in the car. He and his coworker Jacob investigate the crevice and find that the sensor wires have snapped due to the movements inside the mountain. Kristian's former boss Arvid agrees to enter a higher state of alert, but not to sound the evacuation alarm due to being mid tourist season. Kristian returns to the car hours later, but finds that the children have gone to the hotel. Julia wants to say goodbye to their house, so Kristian drives with her to stay there one last night. Sondre books a room at the hotel, and heads down to the basement with his headphones and skateboard.
Arvid and Jacob find the instrument readings accurate and go down to the crevice to investigate. Kristian reviews documents of previous avalanches that suggests the readings indicate an upcoming avalanche. He calls the station and orders them to sound the tsunami alarms for the residents of Geiranger. The avalanche happens, and Arvid sacrifices himself when Jacob's foot becomes trapped. The alarm is sounded shortly before the rockslide crashes into the fjord, creating a gigantic tsunami high that roars towards Geiranger.
With ten minutes until the tsunami hits Geiranger, Kristian and Julia, stuck in traffic, realize their altitude is low. They abandon their car to run uphill on foot, shouting for others to do so. Their neighbor Anna's leg is trapped by a car, and Kristian sends Julia up the mountain with Anna's husband Thomas and daughter Teresa. As the tsunami approaches, Kristian realizes that he and Anna are not going to make it. He frees Ana and seats himself and Anna in a van before the tsunami engulfs the vehicle. Meanwhile, Idun and her colleague Vibeke evacuate the hotel guests onto a bus, but Sondre is nowhere to be found. Idun refuses to leave without him, and tourists Maria and Philip help her search. They find Sondre, but as they return to the lobby, they see that the bus is gone and the tsunami has reached Geiranger. They rush back downstairs to the basement's bomb shelter as they are chased by water. Maria is washed away, but the others make it.
Kristian survives but finds Anna next to him dead, impaled by debris. He walks up to Ørnevingen and finds Julia alive, leaving her with Thomas and Teresa while he heads back to Geiranger to find Idun and Sondre. In the now devastated town, Kristian quickly finds the destroyed evacuation bus full of dead passengers, including Vibeke but not Idun and Sondre, and he starts moving towards the hotel. Down in the bomb shelter, the water level rises, and they are unable to open the door and swim out, as debris out in the corridor is blocking it. Philip, panicking to breathe, pushes Sondre underwater, but Idun drowns him to save her son.
Kristian finds Sondre's backpack and concludes that Idun and Sondre are dead. In his grief, he furiously bangs on some pipes. Idun and Sondre are able to hear, and respond by banging on the walls. As Kristian finds them and dives, incoming water floods the refuge. Removing the debris, he reunites with Idun but runs out of air as he returns with Sondre. Idun heads back in a desperate attempt to revive him, drags him through the water up to the surface, attempts rescue breathing, then CPR. She finally accepts that Kristian has drowned and stops trying. Sondre, however gives one last effort, and he manages to revive Kristian.
The entire family is reunited at Ørnesvingen, while a pan-away camera shot shows that Geiranger has been leveled to the ground.
Norway is a rockslide prone area (created by the Caledonian orogeny) and The Wave is based on a rock-slide tsunami incident which destroyed the village of Tafjord on 7 April 1934, killing 40 people.[2] Prior to that, a similar incident in 1905 triggered a tsunami killing 60 people, and 31 years later, another 74 lost their lives.[12] Uthaug has always been a fan of Hollywood disaster films such as Twister and Armageddon and had long wanted to make a disaster film in Norway.[2] According to him the challenge was to combine the elements of the American genre film with the reality of the situation in Norway.[2]
All the actors performed their own stunts, something the director said was "utterly nerve-racking." And for a climactic scene, in which Joner tries to rescue his family from a flooded hotel, he trained with free-diving instructors to be able to hold his breath for three minutes underwater.[2]
The film sold around 800,000 tickets in Norway,[2] and grossed a total of US$8.2 million at the Norwegian box office becoming the highest-grossing film of 2015 in Norway.[14]
Awards and accolades
At the 2016 Amanda Awards, The Wave received the award for Best Norwegian Film in Theatrical Release, as well as the awards for Best Sound Design and Best Visual Effects.[15] In addition, the film was also nominated in the categories of Best Norwegian Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Music.[16]
The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise aimed at the performances of the cast (mostly the two protagonists), cinematography, score and visual effects.[18][11] Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "an exotic edge-of-seater [that] plays on the beauty and terror of nature" and "a thrilling ride",[3] while chief international film critic Peter Debruge of Variety described it as "an equally impressive tsunami-peril thriller."[18]
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 83% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 6.64/10. The site's critics consensus states: "Well-acted and blessed with a refreshingly humanistic focus, The Wave is a disaster film that makes uncommonly smart use of disaster film clichés."[19]Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[20]
The special effects were lauded by critics, receiving favorable comparison with those of Hollywood.[18] Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter called them "convincingly terrifying and involving."[3]Collider reviewed, "...a major technical achievement that will hopefully make Hollywood reconsider the tendency to go bigger and bigger to the point of excess."[11]
The English-language audio dub, however, was panned by critics. Kelli Marchman of HorrorFuel.com wrote "the voice-over was horrid. The timing was off, and the character's voices were emotionless. It sounded like the lines were being read off of a script by a robot, with no concern of how the characters came across" before recommending the movie only in its original Norwegian.[21]
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