Rating: PG-13
Director: John Andreas Andersen
More a companion film than sequel to 2015's The Wave (in which a long-threatening disaster unleashes a tsunami on a small, scenic Norwegian town), The Quake parallels the first film's premise only this time set in big-city Oslo, which in 1904 was struck by a major earthquake that now threatens to happen anew. Kristoffer Joner again stars as geologist Kristian Eikjord, the man whose warnings no one would heed in the first film (until it was too late) - though this film opens with the man only a shell of his former self, still so affected by the events of the first film he's even separated from his wife and children, living alone in isolation in body, mind and spirit. That is, until it all begins to happen again when the death of one of Kristian's old friends - a man who was trying to reach him about something before he was killed - pulls Kristian into the research his friend was doing; research that proves another major earthquake is about to devastate Oslo. True to any sequel, The Quake tries to ratchet up the special effects and terror (especially to Kristian and his family) higher than in the original, only here said terror comes across as almost over-the-top; an escape from a collapsing office tower, in particular, while cool to watch visually, takes so long it strains both patience and any believability the viewer might have left. This is also one of those disaster films where some of the characters do really stupid things, often putting themselves in deeper peril instead of helping them to escape, that no one in real life would do, as you want to yell at the screen for them to get it together. Good, with some great special effects, just not as compelling or heartfelt as its predecessor. 6.5/10 stars
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