YMMV / The Wave (2015)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Arvid a Reasonable Authority Figure or an Obstructive Bureaucrat?
  • On the one hand, his failure to sound the alarm early costs many lives; however, his posting a 24-hour watch on the mountain allows the alarm to be given off-hours and saves many lives.
  • Arvid's justification of not pulling the alarm to save the tourist season was dumb and short sighted, and immediately called out by Kristian. Then he comes up with a much better one: If he pulls the alarm and nothing happens, the Cry Wolf effect comes into play, so when the disaster really happens, nobody will pay attention. Kristian backs down but demands he make a decision, and his decision is to have the mountain watched continuously. He himself bunks up in the station, and he's the first down in the crevasse to confirm what's going down in there. When shit gets real, he backs up Kristian and orders the alarm sounded immediately. For the most part he acts like a Reasonable Authority Figure.
• California Doubling: Actually averted! The film is mostly filmed in Geiranger and Åkernese, though the Scenery Gorn is either computer-generated or shot in Romania.
• Cliché Storm: The last 40 minutes or so of the movie. Family in peril? Red Shirts abound? Protagonist bring brought back from the dead by The Power of Love? You name it, you get it!
• Just Here for Godzilla: Lots of folks who otherwise might never have heard of this movie turned out for the titular wave. It was one of the highest grossing movies in history within Norway.
• Narm: The English dub of the film is....not that great to begin with. If you're lucky you can find an English dub of the trailer and it is enough to make you either cringe or laugh at how poor the linking between the enthusiasm of the voice and the characters are.
• Nightmare Fuel: The movie is full of it once the wave rolls through.
  • Special note is Kristian and Anna's horrifying ride in the belly of the tsunami, completely immersed and surrounded by entire cars thrown about like dust motes in a hurricane - before debris finally rushes at the camera. Smash to Black. He survives. She doesn't.
  • When Kristian discovers the tourist bus. Everybody inside is crushed and drowned, and he has to search through the bodies, looking for his wife and kid...only sightly leavened by the Beauty Is Never Tarnished state of the bodies, rather then the charnel house the bus' interior would have been in reality.
  • Idun having to drown Phillip, the Danish tourist, out of self-defense when he panics and tries to pull everyone under with him.
  • Of the Real Life variety: since the film came out, scientists estimate that the (inevitable, mind you) real wave will be even bigger.
• No Antagonist: The movie really doesn't have an antagonist; it's man vs. nature all the way.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: For a Norwegian movie shot on a (relatively) small budget, the titular wave is both beautiful and horrifying.