My quick rating – 5.2/10. Kraken tries to convince you that lurking beneath Norway’s deepest fjord is a mythical sea monster capable of flattening boats, swallowing tourists, and ruining everyone’s weekend. Unfortunately, it also expects you to wait…and wait…and wait before it remembers the title of the movie.
The film opens with some creepy black-and-white archival footage of locals being interviewed about mysterious sightings in the Sognefjord, immediately setting up a nice old-school monster mystery. Then we’re treated to sweeping modern-day shots of the fjord that honestly deserve their own tourism commercial. It’s stunning scenery, and for a while it’s the most entertaining thing on screen.
Enter two jet ski enthusiasts who apparently graduated from the Horror Movie School of Bad Decisions. They decide it’d be hilarious to create their own whirlpool in the middle of the fjord. Spoiler alert: nature wins. They vanish into the depths, and the Kraken finally gets its first snack.
Sara Khorami plays Johanne, a marine biologist returning to her hometown after the mysterious disappearances. From there, director Pål Øie checks off nearly every box in the “nature has had enough of humanity” playbook. Missing tourists? Check. Environmental activists exposing dirty secrets on social media? Check. Scientists nobody listens to? Absolutely. All that’s missing is someone suggesting they split up.
The biggest problem is that the movie spends so much time setting all of this up that the Kraken itself feels like it’s stuck in traffic. For a film literally called Kraken, there is a surprising lack of…well…Kraken. I was beginning to think the creature had called in sick.
Once those enormous tentacles finally burst from the water, things improve considerably. The second half delivers some excitement, a handful of action scenes, and enough giant suction cups to satisfy those of you wondering what an octopus on steroids might look like. Sadly, they keep the monster mostly hidden, teasing us with tentacles and one massive eye instead of giving us the full mountain-sized nightmare.
The horror is fairly restrained, the body count isn’t especially graphic, and you’ll most likely guess who survives long before the credits. Still, there’s something nostalgic about its straightforward creature-feature approach. It never tries to reinvent the genre. It simply wants to tell a classic “something enormous lives underwater, and everyone ignored the warning signs” story.
Kraken may not unleash enough monster mayhem to fully satisfy creature-feature fans, but once it finally lets its tentacles loose, it’s entertaining enough to justify the slow journey. Just don’t expect wall-to-wall sea monster action…because this Kraken definitely believes in being fashionably late.
