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Ragnarok

5/30/2016

6 Comments

 

C+
​2.20

A Norwegian archaeologist and his team awaken a giant monster.

Directed by Mikkel Braene Sandemose
Starring Pal Sverre Hagen, Nicolai Cleve Broch, and Sofia Helin
Initial Review by Chris Cook

Picture
With Thor: Ragnarok hitting theaters next year, I decided to watch a movie about Ragnarok. This honestly isn’t the reason; I haven’t even seen the first two Thor movies. I can only imagine that this movie ended up in my Netflix queue after rating the 2010 Norwegian film Trollhunter.
​

I enjoyed Ragnarok to an extent. It gave me a Michael Crichton/National Treasure kind of vibe. And similar to Trollhunter (which had a slightly similar format to the Blair Witch Project), the main thing that stood out for me was the lack of overacting and high-production. America being America, I feel like most modern American cinema is just too much. It’s like 99% of the people that sing the National Anthem. Just sing it, there’s no reason to overperform.


The movie begins with some Viking backstory, but follows archeologist Sigurd Swenson and company on an adventure into a “no man’s land” in search of Viking artifacts to support the legend of Ragnarok. The movie is quite predictable and with a small cast, it’s easy to tell from the get-go who’s going to be walking away alive. Sigurd lost his partner/wife to cancer a few years prior, and his son is trying to set him up with women on the Internet. So, when we meet Elisabeth, Sigurd’s co-worker Allan’s field partner, you know they have good survival odds, especially after the hints that Sigurd’s children (Ragnhild and Brage) miss having a mother figure in their lives (they get dragged on the expedition as their summer vacation). That leaves Allan and of course Leif the guide as our disposable victims.

Like I said before, the simplicity of this film gives it a high nod, but it also leads to my negative views. The suspense was well done. Numerous times I felt like I was waiting for the Kevin Williamson/Paranormal Activity “AHHH, we’re going to make you ‘jump out of your seat’ moment,” but nothing happens. And I liked that they didn’t show the sea creature ‘til later in the movie. America would’ve shoved that thing in our faces during the backstory. Filmed in Scandinavia, I also enjoyed the settings and the musical score. I liked how Leif the guide was attacked and the events leading up to it. I didn’t expect him to hold the group at gunpoint and try to escape with the artifacts. I half-expected the museum director to send another group to secretly follow them and steal any found relics. That’s what America probably would’ve done. Leif’s betrayal was accepted, but then when Allan has a similar moment later in the film, I didn’t buy it. I was almost hoping for a “jump out of your seat” death for him. This could’ve been achieved in the zip-line sequence which I enjoyed.

A large chunk of the climax felt very Lost World/Jurassic Park to me. The kid screwing around and taking the egg, to giving the baby back to the adult creature as a bargaining tool for escape. Didn’t care for it. The creatures chasing the foursome in the bunker felt very “raptors in the kitchen” as well. The movie wasn’t overperformed, but at the same time wasn’t very original.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Definitely better than most of the other crap I’ve selected on here. But the lack of originality knocks it down a bit for me—just another escape from a creature flick with a Viking-inspired treasure hunt thrown in. Going a B- on this one.
6 Comments
Bryan
5/31/2016 12:54:59 am

The Jurassic Park comparison nails it. It's Jurassic Park au naturale.

The characters were much too token for me. Aloof dad down on his luck at work and leaves his pants in the hallway.
Adventurous son who has dad's back.
Angry teenage daughter.
Sporty sidekick.
Woman who will inevitable fall for main character.

The intrigue and suspense were decent, but I thought the director took the easy way out by allowing way too many people to survive.

A few things bugged me...
The timing was always cute.
The kids didn't cry until 26 minutes remaining.
The 2nd half plot revolving around the baby snake hidden in the box was irritating. Any plot which relies on characters keeping plot secrets from each other nine times of of ten will not work to make a good movie.

I wanted the snake to be a ruthless monster and I love dinosaur movies so I stayed up late to finish. However this was quite a bit of a letdown. C/C+

Reply
Sean
6/2/2016 01:13:11 am

It's Jurassic Park 3- the one where Dr Grants assistant tries to keep raptor eggs and the raptors hunt them down.

Beautiful scenery- convenient to have all the Soviet shit to be extra obstacles instead of just running through the forest. Why would the Russkies set up camp on that uninhabited island?

The monster was lamer looking than Anaconda. But the earlier suspense wasn't bad. I would've liked the movie more as a straight archeological find because that's more interesting than ancient monster wants its baby back. The ending scene where it crawls off after getting the baby dropped it a full letter grade for me. D+

Reply
Sean
6/2/2016 01:29:00 am

Mindy said B. She thought I was too harsh- I pointed out the ending took it a letter grade down and she said I was right. So there's that. I think she enjoyed the scenery while she did other things

Reply
Jon
6/2/2016 03:36:23 am

We're following up a home invasion movie with a monster movie, a better horror sub-genre in my mind. With monster movies, there are plenty of strong entries. Alien, Jaws, and The Thing are all masterpieces, and Pacific Rim and Predator are both disposable fun. Ragnarok isn't quite up to the par of any of these, because it doesn't really separate itself from the pack. It's competent, but neither fun nor exceptional.

I'll definitely agree with Chris that the American version of this story would have been dumber, and Ragnarok's not particularly smart in the first place. There's no final girl, or redshirts, or sadism for sadism's sake. There's certainly a shocking amount of nature porn for a horror movie, with what sounds like a John Williams score and sweeping helicopter shots of vistas devoid of human contamination. It's a classier way to tell a story about a giant snake, though having both in the same movie invokes some tonal whiplash.

The direction is above average for the genre, but the writing is not. Ragnarok is cribbing from Jurassic Park with some of those shots and the score and some plot points, but I smelled some Prometheus in here, too, particularly with the baby snake and non-human behavior towards it. Humans have it bred into our DNA to be tentative around snakes; when one is obviously in a threatening stance, no one would continue to try and pet it. In that same vein, no kid has ever naturally said the phrase, "it's not easy being a single parent." I don't usually complain about bad dialogue in foreign films, because it's harder to catch when reading the words, but that stinker of a line came through loud and clear. Much of the rest of Ragnarok is straightforward Tarantino without the panache, openly borrowing without making it better or unique. The egg looked identical to Alien eggs, and if I'd seen Anaconda, I'd likely be reminded of that, too. The script's not particularly surprising or novel in any way.

If I liked the dressed-up direction but remain ambivalent about the script, there's the monster itself as the deciding factor. These kind of crypto-zoology, megafauna monsters don't really work on me. This movie takes place in an otherwise identical world as this one, and when that's the case, I expect some attempt to make the outlandish make sense. If this snake is having babies, there must be another one, and there's a reason animals of that size don't exist outside of oceans; the environment cannot support it. Even if I could turn off my brain, the monster itself isn't really novel or scary. Bryan mentioned repeated attempts by the director to build tension with an escalating score and zooming-in camera, and if you do that so many times as a fakeout, it isn't going to work when it's real. Ragnarok lost my attention on several occasions, a major problem for any movie but especially for a horror movie, which is trying to create primal emotions in comfortable viewers.

Ragnarok is all surface. What you see is what you get. I never found myself intrigued or impressed with the pacing or events of the script, and didn't detect any subtext that the movie was trying to convey. Not a damning sin, but it implies a movie that's aiming low. I'm going to reward it with the lesser of my 'meh' grades, and give it a C-.

Reply
Joe link
6/2/2016 11:18:31 pm

Right off the bat, I totally expected I'd be giving this movie a D or a C-, but something hit me towards the middle of the movie. And that something was Kevin Fucking Bacon.

How the fuck has nobody mentioned Tremors, yet? I loved the Jurassic Park reference, and I couldn't agree more. But nothing stood out more to me than the obvious parallels to the greatness that it Tremors. For example, the zip line scene immediately brought me back to Sir Kevin Bacon (he should totally be knighted) pole vaulting from rock structure to rock structure. Hell, I half expected the USA Network or the TBS Network to cut in with commercials the second his zip line got snagged.

I literally read nothing about this film prior to watching, but I'll be pissed off if the writer or director doesn't love Tremors.

Anyways, for giving me the nostalgic feels, I'm giving it a B. The lame ass ending where they trade kids definitely bothered me.

Reply
Bryan
6/2/2016 11:19:53 pm

Welcome back Summer Joe.

Reply



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