Shaking the prototypical disaster film to its core, The Wave (PSIFF 2016) was a revelation when it successfully infused strong, dynamic characters and relationships into the often soulless CGI-barrage spectacle that is synonymous with the genre. With The Quake, director John Andreas Andersen continues to wade through the internal struggles that haunt geologist Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner, The Revenant), impending natural disaster not withstanding. Although heralded for being a hero for his part in predicting a tsunami that nearly submerged his hometown of Geiranger, Kristian can barely keep his head above water. His wife and children have left him after a breakdown, and he's holed up in his newspaper-clipping-adorned apartment with little will to live. When word reaches the forlorn geologist of a recently deceased colleague's seismic findings echoing a cataclysmic disaster from 100 years ago, Kristian springs into action. Facing the same doubt as before, Kristian must warn the Norwegian capital and his estranged family before the first buildings begin to fall.