07/04/2026 - The Norwegian director explains his thinking behind unleashing a mythical creature in his Nordic monster movie

Director Pål Øie (left) and producer Einar Loftesnes at Night Visions (© Juho Liukkonen)

Accompanied by producer Einar Loftesnes at the Finnish genre festival Night Visions, director Pål Øie delivered a proper Nordic monster movie – as well as some tentacles – with Kraken. “We used the tentacles for promotional purposes in Norway and brought them over. It’s been a brilliant way to market the movie,” admits Loftesnes.

Cineuropa: Do you have a fondness for monster movies? Did you grow up with them and miss them as an adult?
Pål Øie: I have to be honest: no. I don’t miss them at all [laughs]! We have been exposed to so many monster movies, whether we liked it or not, and even classic Spielberg films are not among my favourites. But this was a chance for me to open a new door and venture into a new world. The bishop of Bergen was the first person to describe the kraken, and we found out that all this happened no more than 500 metres from our office. Then, Hollywood stole the creature. We wanted to bring the kraken back to the Norwegian fjords.

Was it fun to make something big? Nordic genre likes intimate stories, but here, you have a massive monster and wide-open spaces. You were able to play.
Absolutely. It was funny and a little bit scary because actors don’t like to act against nothing. All they had were tennis balls – and their imagination. I don’t even think we showed them any pictures of the kraken. Every one of them had a different kraken in mind, but we did discuss it a lot. It was a difficult film to make, technically. Everyone should go and see it in the cinema because that’s what it was made for. It was amped with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Vision and 4DX – there are actually very few cinemas in Europe that can play it properly, but one of them is in Bergen. It’s just so important to really experience the sound and feel the movie.

Now that you are travelling with Kraken, do you think that viewers in the Nordics are happy to see it precisely because it was made at home and not in the USA?
I think so. I guess the Norwegians love to see this kind of creature in their own environment. Also, there are some classic elements here – I do like Jaws – but I wanted to make something different.

Or have a different ending? I won’t spoil it, but you flirt with darkness a little.
We were thinking about different endings at first, but then we just liked this one. It feels fair, and it feels right. We had to fight for it, though. I also liked to challenge people’s expectations in my previous films, but this is a bit dark. Some producers would most certainly say no. I’m actually quite surprised because now, everyone seems to love it. In Hollywood, we would have got fired.

When you were figuring out the look of the kraken, what did you base it on?
We worked on that creature for at least one year, and I think we landed on a good version. I really love it, I have to say. In a way, it’s a gigantic octopus, but there’s more to it. I’ve watched every octopus clip there is on YouTube because tentacles are really difficult to create. It’s this iconic, B-movie image. We also talked about how “monstrous” it should really be. Should it be scarier? We read that an octopus has a form of brain in each tentacle. It’s a marvellous creature; it’s not just a monster. I wanted us to sympathise with the kraken, also because of what it has to deal with – this company, all this pollution. I wanted it to be beautiful, too.

You really make people wait for the big reveal. There are all these small details: fish jumping out of the water, crabs crawling onto the road… Nature knows something is up before the humans do.
It also has to do with budgetary restraints, but I just like a project that’s a slow-burner. I like to build up the atmosphere because if you wait a little, the end will be so much stronger. That’s also a challenge because these days, so many viewers expect to see a cruise ship going down in the very first scene. People are used to seeing so many crazy things, so you just hope the drama itself will keep them entertained.

You seem optimistic about the younger generation. You have a girl who pays attention and cares about what’s happening to that place. She seems so disappointed with the adults, saying they are all corrupt.
It’s important to have hope. It might be a dark ending, but yes, there’s hope for the new generation. We liked this character a lot. Maybe we just hope that the new generation will be better than us?