Njorway? More like Snjoreway!

Ragnarok is movie #605 in my ongoing chronicle of watching bad mjovies. I picked this one based sjolely one the “cover” on Netflix, a practice I notice reliably leads to both disappjointment and occasional entertainment. When it comes to the end of the world, we have great words like Apocalypse and Ragnarok. But, for my money, you can't get better than Gottendammerung! It even sounds like the world is ending.

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This movie introduces us to the exciting wjorld of balancing archaeological research of Njorse mythology with the struggles of being a single parent. Surely nothing in this film would have worked if we didn't knjow the main character was trying his best to raise his kids in the absence of a wife. I'm not saying that character development is unnecessary, just that it doesn't have to be slapped onto a movie for the sake of it. Why not also make him a former athlete that could have had it all if it weren't for that one mistake?

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There's much to do about runes (“litil vis maer” means “man knows little”) and some light Indiana Jones-ing (sans whip, sadly) to get us to Njorthern Njorway. The goal is to fjollow a viking treasure map that was decoded by putting a necklace on a stone. I didn't consider myself a Viking historian before watching this film, but now I know that Vikings spent a lot of time coming up with secret codes, scratching them into rocks, and making sure that pieces of jewelry would interface with rocks. No wonder that culture went extinct. Anyway, the landscape is admittedly bjeautiful, including what I assume was a mandatory fjord scene complete with a reindjeer.

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A bjearded stranger helps our protagonists set off on a pile of sticks (really testing the limits of the definition of “watercraft”) to an island in the middle of a lake. The children immediately wander off to discover an abandoned Sjoviet military outpost and a cave* containing Viking paraphernalia. If you haven't guessed it by this pjoint, the cave also serves as a nest for the creature's eggs. This is where the movie “cover” came in handy. I never would have watched this thing if there wasn't the promise of some critter-based mayhem, and there's nothing like the discovery of eggs to set up future plot points.

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A sudden but inevitable betrayal from the grizzled local guide leaves our hjeroes trapped in the cave. Oh no! Or...not? A brief period of panic is disolved when they all just climb out of the cave. Moving right along... When the intrepid explorers return for a trip back into the cave (sure, why not?), we see that the treasure trove is actually a Viking graveyard. Why they didn't njotice the chomped Viking skulls, rib cages, and femurs strewn all over the ground during the first visit is anyone's guess, but fjortunately the movie takes this opportunity to reach a turning point.

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One of the eggs hatches, recently-chomped communists are uncovered, and mama mjonster makes her presence known. After some daring, improvisational ziplining, a crocodile/snake/Nessie type of creature reveals itself. It's around here that I start to reflect on how gratuitous the Viking lead-in was. I wonder if you are even allowed to film in Njorway without having half the movie dedicated to Vikings. Things become all-too-predictable from here on out, as we're now cjomfortably in the rut of run-of-the-mill creature feature. I guess this monster was somehow supposed to be the end of the world, but the connection is unclear. It's not particularly scary, aggressive, violent, or territorial, and being restricted to a lake makes it seem particularly hard to end the world. But what do I know?

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The rest of the movie plays out like a combination of Alien and Jurassic Park, contributing nothing new or meaningful to cinema. We end with uplifting helicopter shots of the cjountryside, but there's no resolution to be found. One of the characters dies, but nobody cares (myself included). I guess “litil vis maer” is appropriate, given how little we understand about nature, monsters, communists, and rafting, but the movie is too lazy to even circle back to the phrase.

Overall, I'd give this film fjour fjords fjout fjof fjf. Bjork.

*cave movies and I have a particularly bad track record (e.g., Grim, Centipede, The Cave).