Crew
Director – Pål Øie, Co-Director/Photography – Sjur Aarthurn, Screenplay – Natasha Arthur, Vilde Eide & Kjersti Helen Rasmussen, Story – Sjur Aarthurn & Pål Øie, Producers – John Einar Hagen & Einar Loftesnes, Music – Roy Westad, Visual Effects Supervisors – Erik Ferguson, Theodor Flo-Groeneboom & Alexander Kaddim, Special Effects Supervisor – Fredrik Røttingen, Production Design – Kari Kankaanpää & Okku Rahikainen. Production Company – Nordisk/Handmade Films in Norwegian Woods.
Cast
Sara Khorami (Johanne), Mikel Bratt-Silset (Erik), Øyvind Brandtzæg (Avaldsnes), Jenny Evensen (Maria), Jon Erik Myre (Georg), Ingvild Holthe Bygdnes (Henriette), Hans Morten Hansen (Olav), Steinar Klouman Hallert (Cato), Filip Bargee Ramberg (Hallvard)
Plot
The marine biologist Johanne is sent to the Sognefjord to investigate a series of disappearances of people on the fjord. Johanne arrives in the nearby town of Vangsnes, the town she grew up in, and meets her ex Erik, the supervisor at a salmon farm built in the fjord. As Johanne conducts tests, other people begin to disappear out on the fjord. She makes the discovery that Avaldsnes, the head of the farm, has turned Sonic Lice, a technology used to help the salmon grow, up beyond its safety limits in the hope of luring Japanese investors. However, this has awoken a giant kraken monster asleep in the fjord.
The kraken is a mythic sea monster of Norwegian legend. Reports of it first emerged in the 17th Century as a giant monster some 20-30 feet in length. The familiar octopoid depiction did not come in until popular 18th Century illustrations and it is believed that originally it may simply have been a misidentified giant squid. We have had assorted appearances of the kraken on film from Clash of the Titans (1981) to Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (2007).
Kraken is a fairly solid and satisfying example of a Monster Movie. The visual effects for the film are very accomplished. And once we get to the main meat of the action, about fifty minutes in, director Pål Øie creates some great tension out of massive tentacles battering the station and slithering all the way around the rig, even pushing their way inside and Sara Khorami cowering as one slides across her. The monster itself is made so big that it is almost on the scale of a Cthulhu.
The plot supporting all of this is a fairly simple one. There is no explanation of what the kraken is or where it came from. Or for that matter how something so massive could live undetected in something like the Sognefjord (which Google tells me is 127 miles in length and 4,291 feet in maximum depth, the biggest fjord in the world – nevertheless ….). Things are grafted onto a nominal environmental plot. Everything works fairly well except for the ending, which just peters out – letting the kraken be defeated without much moment and abruptly killing off the heroine.
Kraken should not be confused with the Russian submarine encounters monster drama Kraken (2025) that came out nine months earlier.
Kraken comes from Norwegian director Pål Øie who previously made the horror films Villmark/Wild Woods (2003) and its sequel Villmark 2 (2015), and Hidden (2009), as well as the non-genre disaster movie The Tunnel (2019).
Trailer here