Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

The Wave Blu-ray Movie Review

After Me the Deluge

Reviewed by Michael Reuben June 21, 2016

The Wave (or Bølgen, as it's known at home) was the most successful Norwegian film of 2015 in its native land, which only goes to show that Americans aren't the only moviegoers who enjoy watching their country and its citizens devastated on screen. Like his fellow filmmaker Mikkel Brænne Sandemose (Ragnarok), director Roar Uthaug wanted to bring a distinctively Hollywood genre closer to home, and the result is an efficiently plotted disaster film in the tradition of Earthquake, Dante's Peak and San Andreas. The film is distributed in the U.S. by Magnolia Pictures, which has chosen The Wave as its first Blu-ray disc to include a Dolby Atmos soundtrack.

The Wave is classical in its setup. The film's central figure is a geologist, Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner), who works at an early warning station monitoring seismic activity in a deep crevice of Åkerneset, a mountain overlooking the picturesque Geiranger Fjord. The popular tourist town of Geiranger sits on the nearby shore. Twice now, in 1905 and 1934, massive rock slides from unstable peaks have triggered tsunamis in the fjords. Should the same thing happen to Åkerneset, scientists have calculated that the occupants of Geiranger will have no more than ten minutes to escape to higher ground.

Today, however, Kristian is bidding farewell to his colleagues as he and his family pack up their house for a move to the city of Stavanger, where the geologist has secured a cushy job with an oil company. His young daughter, Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande), is intrigued by the prospect of a new home, but his teenage son, Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro), is dejected at being removed from familiar environs. After his office party, Kristian is supposed to depart with the two kids, while his wife, Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), winds up her job working the desk at Hotel Geiranger. But Kristian, who is afflicted with the Cassandra-like insight that curses every hero of a disaster film, can't escape the feeling that the latest readings from the mountain signal impending doom. Instead of leaving on the ferry with Julia and Sondre, he races back to the monitoring station to warn his colleagues.

In another familiar disaster film trope, Kristian's former boss, Arvid (Fridtjov Såheim), refuses to accept the geologist's intuition, although he does agree to increase the town's alert status. Having missed the last ferry, Kristian and the children must now spend one more night in the shadow of Åkerneset—which, of course, is when the mountain abruptly collapses and a massive wall of water begins coursing toward the town.

The Wave's script—which was co-written by John Kåre Raake, the author of Ragnarok, another Norwegian re-imagining of a familiar Hollywood genre—contrives to separate Kristian's family, so that they are in different places when the tsunami hits. Kristian and his daughter are desperately racing up a mountain road, where their progress is blocked by a panicked traffic jam. Idun and her son are trapped in the hotel with two other guests when the wave levels the town. Splitting up the family allows Urthaug both to depict multiple forms of devastation and to provide the characters with a variety of challenges after the initial impact. It also gives him a bigger canvas to convey the magnitude of the wave's destructive power.

It may seem odd to speak of "restraint" in the context of a disaster movie, but one of The Wave's virtues is that it sticks to credible phenomena rather than piling up improbable catastrophes one after another in the name of spectacle. The multiple quakes in San Andreas may have provided lucrative work for effects houses, and they are undeniably eye-popping—but they're also numbing. By the time the last temblor rocks San Francisco, destruction on a citywide scale has become so routine that it's almost dull. Urthaug's film, by contrast, limits itself to one harrowing deluge, followed by many smaller but equally deadly predicaments left in its wake for those lucky enough to survive. The director also effectively individuates some of the victims so that showing their bodies in the aftermath has genuine impact.

The Wave is all the more sobering for being not so much "the imagination of disaster" (in Susan Sontag's famous phrase) as a simulation of the inevitable. The mountain Åkerneset really exists, and it really does have a deep crevice that is continuously monitored and steadily expanding. As a closing title card informs us: "All experts agree there will be a rockslide. They do not know when."

The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Wave was shot by Norwegian cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund, and although IMDb lists the format as 35mm film, in fact the film was shot on Red (the cameras shown in the extras are clearly digital). Director Urthaug opted for a documentary, you-are-there style that stresses realism, which is reflected in the film's everyday palette and simple production design. Even without a colorist's enhancement, the landscape vistas with their rocky peaks, blue fjords and lush vegetation look gorgeous. The image is sharply detailed before the wave hits, especially in daylight, but it becomes less distinct in the aftermath (deliberately so, through the use of smoke, haze and shadow). Blacks are solid and well-rendered, and the image does not suffer from noise or interference. Magnolia has mastered The Wave with an average bitrate of 31.01 Mbps, and the rate spikes up sharply in the latter half of the film, when water is everywhere.

(Note that the film opens with archival footage of previous tsunamis, as well as news casts. The image here is intentionally of lesser quality.)

The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Wave was released to theaters in Dolby Atmos, and Magnolia's Blu-ray contains a home theater version of the same mix. Water is the soundtrack's key element, and Atmos processing places its roaring, cascading, dripping invasion everywhere, both all around and overhead. The track is thunderous during the tsunami, but it is even more unnerving in the aftermath, when water seems to be pursuing the survivors through flooded chambers, corridors and crawlspaces. The initial rockslide is rendered with equal power, and the slow buildup to the disaster is filled with sounds of crumbling earth and falling debris, especially in the scenes depicting the geologists' descent into the unstable crevice. Even so simple an effect as a helicopter' motor is enhanced by Atmos processing, which precisely positions the sound of the whirring blades according to the camera's perspective, including above the viewer.

Magnus Beite (Ragnarok) wrote the tense and energetic score. Although I cannot evaluate the clarity of the Norwegian dialogue, voices sounded natural and well-prioritized. For those who don't want to read subtitles, the disc contains an English dub track, but you will have to forgo Atmos processing in favor of TrueHD 5.1.

The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes of The Wave (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:29): This behind-the-scenes featurette includes footage from both location shooting and the elaborately constructed sets on soundstages in Bucharest. In Norwegian with English subtitles.



• The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 1 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:14): VFX supervisor Lars Erik Hansen describes the process of creating the initial rockslide, which was preceded by extensive location scouting and photography. In Norwegian with English subtitles.



• The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 2 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:09): Here, Hansen discusses the creation of the wave itself and also of the scene where it washes over a mountain road filled with traffic.



• The Wave Visual Effects Breakdown: Part 3 (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:06): The third and final segment focuses on the scenes of the wave hitting the town of Geiranger.



• Interview with Director Roar Uthuag (1080i; 1.78:1; 4:29): Interviewed in Los Angeles (and in English), the director describes the inspiration for The Wave and the challenges of making a disaster film.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:09): Efficient and effective.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for High Rise, Gridlocked, Synchronicity and A War, as well as promos for the Charity Network and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live produces the message "Check back for updates".

The Wave Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Wave was Norway's official submission to the 2016 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, but it failed to make the final cut, and it's not hard to see why, given the Academy's well-known preference for high-toned drama. Urthaug's film is classic popcorn fare, and it has no other aspiration than to entertain, which it does well, reinventing and invigorating familiar elements for a new environment. Highly recommended.