Uniquely Norwegian in its visual style and its bold narrative choices, Kraken wraps its tentacles tightly around you and doesn’t let you go. One thing is for sure, you will never look at a plateful of Calamari in the same way again, plus, you might find yourself questioning the way it was either extracted from the sea or, more likely, farmed, too!
We often talk about the great unknown of space, striving to make sense of its mysterious expanse and celebrating those who brave its cold depths. Yet, humanity has only physically explored about 5% of the Earth’s oceans. It’s a startling fact that, even when it comes to mapping our planet, only about 25% of the global seafloor has been explored at high resolution. Yet despite this, we have done a damn good job in upsetting, destroying and forever changing the oceans that support us. We dump over 12 million metric tons of plastic into our oceans each year, while oil, human-made chemicals and sewage change habitats and actively poison the very fish we consume.
One form of damage that is less discussed is noise. Shipping, military activity, cables, and underwater sonic devices directly affect invertebrates, including jellyfish and anemones, and likely also affect sharks, whales, dolphins, sea turtles, and other marine life; it’s a fact not lost on director Pål Øie and fellow writers Vilde Eide, Kjersti Helen Rasmussen, Sjur Aarthun and Natasha Arthur in the Norwegian eco-horror Kraken.
The origin of the Kraken legend is difficult to pin down, but there’s no doubt it can be traced to Norway and to tales of a monstrous beast encountered on the high seas. Kraken appeared in some of the earliest Norse stories and has since become a cinematic favourite in the creature feature genre. From the earliest days of film in Georges Méliès’ 1906 silent feature Under the Seas to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Meg 2: The Trench, there has been no shortage of giant squid-like Krakens appearing from the depths of the ocean on screen.
However, as you would expect from a Norwegian movie, Pål Øie’s sea monster flick offers us something slightly different. Yes, we have the giant sea creature silently resting beneath the waves in a deep fjord, only to be awakened, and yes, we also have a series of classic sea monster tropes, including an army of flesh-munching parasites. But Kraken places its monster horror firmly within the guardrails of a satisfyingly effective eco-horror, and it’s all the better for it.
Set in the vast and majestic landscape of Norway’s Sognefjord, the country’s largest fjord, Marine researcher Johanne (Sara Khorami) is summoned to the fjord after reports of mass salmon strandings on the beaches and other strange marine phenomena close to an experimental fish farm run by Erik (Mikkel Bratt Silset), who happens to be an old flame. Erik, with the help of Marine years before, developed a new, cutting-edge underwater sonic device for delousing Salmon. But Marine left the project when it was clear it couldn’t and wouldn’t work, also leaving her relationship with Erik behind. However, here she is, back on the fjord, and to her surprise, the sonic fish farm is fully up and running, and keen to seek the financial backing of Japanese investors under the steer of its owner, Avaldsnes (Øyvind Brandtzæg).
As mysterious and deadly events continue to occur on the fjord, Marine begins exploring the sonic devices and the guardrails built into the system to protect the wider fjord outside the Salmon farm. It’s not long before Marine uncovers a deadly truth that Erik has also been shielded from – money and financial investment are far more important than operating within guidelines in salmon farming. The Kraken is awake, and it’s got human indifference to the fjord and the environment and our addiction to capitalism at any cost in its sights as it and a whole army of hungry parasites emerge.
Pål Øie is no stranger to delivering tension-laden stories, having also directed the claustrophobic Christmas disaster movie The Tunnel. Like The Tunnel, Øie takes his time building tension, with nods to Jaws, Jurassic Park, Alien, and It Came From Beneath the Sea, to name just a few. Even when the Kraken and our monstrous flesh-munching parasites do emerge, they are used sparingly, only further enhancing the power of their appearance. However, Øie, in a similar vein to The Tunnel, struggles slightly to develop his characters, leaving us with somewhat hollow leads who occasionally fail to hold our interest or sustain our emotional commitment. That said, Kraken is superior to any American sea monster movies we have been served in recent years, and it easily tosses The Meg back into the Mariana Trench where it should have stayed.
While it may not be perfect, Kraken takes all the ingredients of the classic disaster-and-eco-thriller and sprinkles in some monster-movie mayhem, creating an engaging, interesting, and creative eco-horror that places destructive human behaviour in the spotlight. Uniquely Norwegian in its visual style and its bold narrative choices, Kraken wraps its tentacles tightly around you and doesn’t let you go. One thing is for sure, you will never look at a plateful of Calamari in the same way again, plus, you might find yourself questioning the way it was either extracted from the sea or, more likely, farmed, too!
Kraken arrives on digital June 1.
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