Review: ‘Kraken’ Goes Full Spielberg, for Better or Worse
There was a discussion online a few weeks ago about Obsession and Backrooms, namely with regard to how this generation’s filmmakers use other filmmakers as a point of reference almost exclusively. Instead of culling from literature, art, poetry, and other media, their homage is strictly cinematic, and the result is reductive cinema in conversation with only cinema. I thought of that discourse a lot while watching Kraken, the latest from Norwegian filmmaker Pål Øie. It’s a serviceable monster movie, though it’s frustratingly indebted to Steven Spielberg’s biggest blockbusters.
Johanne (Sara Khorami), a marine biologist, is commissioned to investigate a fish farm in her hometown. The owner, Avaldsnes (Øyvind Brandtzæg), is in the midst of impressing Japanese investors with his farm’s latest technology—underwater sonic devices intended to remove parasitic lice from salmon. Johanne and her ex-flame, Erik (Mikkel Bratt Silset), developed the technology together, though she fled town before the device was operational, and Erik saw it through to the finish line.
There’s a strong environmental bent, and like every monster movie post-Jaws, Kraken is hesitant to say (or show) too much about its monster. The first hour, save for a few off-screen deaths, is largely Johanne’s procedural inquiry into the salmon farm and the disastrous consequences of blasting underwater sonic waves in a delicate fjord marine ecosystem. Kraken does fare better than most in its patience, largely because the environmental investigation is moderately compelling, and both Johanne and Erik are, well, adults, free from the kind of blockbuster quips we see often in American movies.
That doesn’t mean the titular beast is anything more than a tease, only making its full appearance an hour into a movie that runs just over 80 minutes total. It’s the Jaws effect, though like most movies in the wake of that enduring classic, Kraken doesn’t necessarily earn its furtiveness. Kraken isn’t Spielberg, and it would have been better served with more of its namesake.
Pål Øie does get creative, introducing a nasty little parasitic bugger for some claustrophobic, closed-quarters action (think Jurassic Park’s raptors), and they even get a Dilophosaurus homage, spitting noxious black sludge into the face of Norway’s answer to Wayne Knight. There’s some icky gore, too, as local police (Ingvild Holthe Bygdnes) continue to find mutilated bodies washed ashore in a B-plot, but it’s all just a tease for the giant, mythological mayhem everyone wants out of a movie named Kraken.
And when it does finally make its full appearance, it’s decent enough, with low light and rain serving to obfuscate some rubbery CG effects, and Øie—no doubt mindful of the budget—is certain to never put too much of it on-screen at once. The climax principally sees the Kraken lay siege to the floating fish farm, an accelerated, indoor version of Stephen Sommers’ Deep Rising. Less Kraken, more tentacles crawling through hallways and vents to grab whatever poor, unfortunate soul is unlucky enough to be in the way. The tension is fitfully intense at times, and I got a kick out of the full-borne tilt into Kraken silliness by the end.
Yet, Kraken is torn between competing urges. It wants to be a serious, adult conservation drama and a big, goofy monster movie all at once. Øie doesn’t have the deft touch of, say, André Øvredal or Roar Uthaug (The Wave, Troll) to make those disparate interests work, and he certainly doesn’t have Spielberg’s singular vision, despite the many callbacks to the acclaimed director’s most famous works throughout. Kraken, however, does eventually live up to its title, and for an early summer monster fest, it’s good enough to wrap a tentacle or two around.
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Kraken
Summary
Norwegian creature feature Kraken delivers a few Kaiju-sized thrills, but it’s too indebted to yesterday’s blockbusters to soar.
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