As I have commented on with two posting here, I am currently and thoroughly enjoying the Swedish/Danish television co-production of the Nordic Noir series The Bridge. Particularly impressive has been Sofia Helin’s performance as Detective Saga Noren and I went looking for other projects that she appeared in to compare her performances there and that lead me to Ragnarök.

Released in 2013 Ragnarök is a Norwegian monster movie about an archeologist, Sigurd, that follows clues about a Viking voyage to Finnmark in the extreme north of Norway and an abandoned fenced off zone between Norway and Russia where he finds not only the archeological evidence to support his theories but an ancient aquatic beast. Trapped with his two children and a couple of associates Sigurd must discover the nature of the beats and with little supplies and no weapons see everyone safely out of the dark and dangerous forest.

Sofia Helin plays Elisabeth one of Sigurd’s companions and is in a supporting role in the production. While she is given little actual character work to do, she displays that her work in The Bridge is actually from a great deal of range.

Ragnarök itself is a middling film. It is not bad, and it is not great. The action sequences of tense and taut, the plot takes turns that moved it away from predictability. (When they were trapped in the caverns, I fully expected the rest of the film to take place underground, but both the characters and the writers were more inventive than that.) The cinematography is lovely, fully capturing the deep and isolating wilderness the characters find themselves trapped in while the special effects for the monster are credible and still hold up eight years later which cannot be said about many higher budgeted productions.

The film’s failings are that as a dramatic story there is not enough meat on the bones of the character’s conflict to drive a full feature and as a monster movie the beast arrives too late in the story. The ‘monster movie’ elements of Ragnarök takes place entirely in the films third act and while well-paced and well thought out the late arrival of the film central premise damages the final product.

Still, I do no regret taking the time to watch this film and at a scant hour and a half it doesn’t require a massive commitment.

Ragnarök in Norwegian with English subtitles is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.