By Drew Dietsch
| Published
We all have specific things in movies that make us perk up with excitement. I’m not talking about something as universal as, “Ooh! A big explosion!” I’m talking about focused ideas that attract you as a lover of fiction. For example, maybe you specifically love when a group of experts all have to get together to solve a problem. Or maybe you’re a car freak and anything where the story revolves around automobiles is going to… get your motor running. (I hate every day I draw breath)
For me, I love aquatic creature features, or fin flicks as we call them over on GenreVision. Sea monsters of all shapes and sizes get me stoked for a movie. The good news is that there are a lot of those flicks out there for my viewing enjoyment. The bad news is that there aren’t a lot of great ones being made in the modern movie landscape.
Which is why after watching the teaser trailers for Kraken, I am crossing my fingers (and tentacles) that this is one of the great ones.
This Kraken Movie Looks Like It’s Got The Goods
Kraken is a Norwegian film which already has me intrigued. Norway has a solid track record with horror concepts. There’s the excellent Troll Hunter, one of the best found footage movies ever made. You’ve also got The Innocents, a chilling and hypnotic meditation on children with supernatural powers. You also have goofier fare like Dead Snow, a movie with the wildest marketing tie-in of all time.
Basically, I’m more apt to believe a legitimately thrilling fin flick will come out of Norway than from Hollywood at this point. Kraken definitely benefits from being made outside the auspices of the American studio system. Hopefully, that means the movie won’t succumb to a lot of the traps Hollywood blockbusters often fall into.
Classic Fin Flicks Storytelling
To be honest, the story of Kraken does not seem radically new for the eco-horror subgenre. There’s an incursion into nature for the means of human profit –– in the case of Kraken, it centers around fish farming –– and a big animal is going to knock off some poor dolts to remind us that it’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Look, I don’t need a fin flick to have the epic narrative of Lawrence of Arabia. Part of the appeal of aquatic creature features is how they execute tried-and-true story structures and character archetypes. Sure, we occasionally get something truly outside the box like Dangerous Animals (my review), but us deepwater die-hards want to see familiar concepts told in fun and even familiar ways. Kraken looks to be delivering on that promise with some sharp filmmaking and sleek polish.
Kraken hits theaters on October 24 in Norway, but I can’t find anything about when we can expect to see it in our neck of the woods. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one because the world could really use a fantastic giant sea monster movie right about now. I’d much rather have that than Tron: Ares.
