Kraken is a Norwegian movie from 2026. I don’t know how many movies there are about the actual Kraken. There are loads of movies about various sea monsters, that’s for sure. But a sea monster is a sea monster and the actual Kraken is something completely different. I guess you could call it the Rolls Royce of sea monsters. In other words, it’s something big, something huge, something enormous!
I think that it’s very fitting that the film itself is from Norway, a Scandinavian country, as the Kraken legend is part of Norse mythology or folklore. Because even if we’ve all seen Clash of the Titans and know the line “release the Kraken” by heart, it has very little to do with the Greek myths.
As a Swede, I might have a little easier understanding of Norwegian than most of the world. But don’t think too highly of me, I use subtitles all the way through. Because even if some of the basics are the same, and quite understandable, there are other words and/or dialects that I’m not very good at.
Kraken revolves around this salmon factory in one of the fjords of Norway. The deepest fjord we learn early on. It figures, since the Kraken should belong in the very depths of the ocean anyway. Well, the salmon are treated by some sorts of sonic waves to keep them free from a certain parasite. So far so good you might think. And yes, that might be an edge cutting technology that seems pretty believable. But there’s also the typical business deal of the century going down and everything must look perfect to the buyers.
Therefore, there is of course a bit of cheating involved in the sonic waves sent out. There needs to be between certain frequencies to be useful and quite constrained so that it doesn’t affect the whole eko-system in the fjord or the ocean. Well, you know the drill. Just like in every other movie, someone is not taking the warning signs seriously. Greed is still a concept that you can’t ignore. As Kraken is a marine film, I guess the Mayor in Jaws comes to mind.
What’s good about it is that it doesn’t rush to show us an enormous beast. We have to wait for it and that brings more tension. At the same time there’s also tension between some of the characters. The woman sent there to inspect everything might have a history with the locals. Both in terms of dislike from some but there’s also an old love story there. So, the entire town there ‘s a feeling of where the loyalty lies. How much is greed worth?
There are no great surprises in Kraken, the storytelling is pretty obvious and you can see what’s going to happen from a mile away most of the time. But I must also confess that I was a bit dumbstruck and fooled a couple of times.
When the inevitable Kraken finally shows up there’s mostly shots of tentacles so that you’ll have to use your imagination a bit to really determine the size of this thing. That’s good. Enormous beasts have a tendency to look more silly than frightening why the movie craters tries a little too much. I would say that the tentacle scenes could have been a little more intense though. They’re a little dull and a little too long to make the pace of the film work properly.
Finally, we get to see the beast. I think they did well. It’s not really in relation to anything so you still have to imagine the size a little bit. The bottom line is that it wasn’t very scary or exciting, but it was nice with a serious take on the Kraken mythology. A good film I would say!
