Bolgen (aka The Wave) (2015)

An anxious geologist (Kristoffer Joner) at an early warning center in a small Norwegian town suspects that an impending rockslide into a fjord will cause a tsunami. His fellow geologists at the center have their doubts. By the time he's proved right, it's too late. This intelligent "disaster" film courtesy of Norway doesn't try to emulate its Hollywood counterparts. There's no all star cast ("who will survive and who will die?") to fret over as the film concentrates on just one family. The first half of the film is a crackerjack thriller. The film's director Roar Uthaug slowly and methodically cranks up the tension by concentrating on the details of the impending disaster rather than the human melodramas of such all star Hollywood disaster films like EARTHQUAKE and TOWERING INFERNO. The special effects are minimal (by Hollywood standards) but impressive nonetheless and the second half concentrates on the family's attempt to survive and reunite (not unlike THE IMPOSSIBLE). The very ending may be pure Hollywood but I can forgive it that. BOLGEN takes it narrative from an actual 1934 incident in which a rockslide tsunami destroyed a Norwegian village and killed 40 people. I'm thankful the U.S. distributor (Magnolia films) didn't dub the film into English in order to reach a wider market. With Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Fridtjov Saheim and Edith Haagenrud Sande.