j* Movie Reviews 2019

Skjelvet aka The Quake (2018)

So perhaps the weirdest thing about watching this was that my state had an earthquake while we were. Didn't feel though.

This film is kind of bookended with Earthquakes. There's the big bad quake that happened before the film starts and continues to haunt our slightly freaked out seismologist, and then there's the inevitable quake at the end. This leans very, very heavily into the "scientists trying to warn everyone" genre. You know how that's the standard start of any disaster movie? Ten minutes or so of scientist warnings?

Well this film is mostly made of that.

It's predominantly family and haunted-man drama. Being traumatised by not saving enough lives in the previous quake, our main character Kristian fails to cope with family life. But then when another seismologist is killed in a tunnel roof collapse, Kristian realises the dead guy had been sending him data.

They both come across as a bit koo-koo, the kind of obsessed scientists that put everyone a bit on edge. Most of the film is almost a mystery "who-dunnit" as Kristian works to unravel the dead guys samples and notes and data. Meanwhile, the deadguy's daughter is clearly not impressed at another seismologist-failed-father. Kristian spends lots of time ignoring his own daughter, Julia, played by the amazingly-eyed Edith Haagenrud-Sande. She reminds me a lot of young Dakota Fanning. He also ignores his estranged wife and son.

Anyway, eventually he deciphers the notes and decides he's confident the big quake is coming and he tries the usual channels to sound the alarm and the usual channels as usual in these kinds of movies fail. So then there's some pretty impressive Earthquake chaos in Oslo. In particular the scenes inside the big hotel are amazing.

On that note, this film manages to tap several fear-factors really well. The creaky creepy underground tunnels are great for claustrophobics, I was like "tunnels, ewwww!" And then there are some gobsmackingly frightful heights scenes with people nearly falling out of highrise buildings.

Mostly brooding, pensive drama with a little disaster towards the end.

J* gives it 3 stars.