The Abyss Review: A City Sinks as Interpersonal Conflicts Rise

The Swedish disaster thriller The Abyss takes its inspiration from startling real-world events. The remote northern city of Kiruna was built directly above one of the world’s largest underground iron ore mines, operated by the state-owned company LKAB. For over a century, miners have burrowed enormous caverns beneath Kiruna to extract the precious ore. But in 2004, several earthquakes and rock bursts made the ground unstable, cracking buildings on the surface.

Experts realized that further mining could cause catastrophic sinkholes. The entire city center would need to be relocated two miles east, with LKAB footing the $1 billion bill. This monumental moving project continues to this day. It’s this precarious situation that sets the stage for The Abyss. With families and livelihoods rooted in the mine for generations, what happens when disaster strikes too soon?

The movie imagines a worst-case scenario where seismic shocks and tunnel collapses give little warning before catastrophe. We follow Kiruna native Frigga, a safety manager struggling to evacuate the town she grew up in. It’s a race against time, with human drama playing out against moody shots of the icy Lapland backdrop. Sweden is better known for introspective art films than big-budget spectacle. But with The Abyss, they take a crack at the disaster genre with a concept that raises the stakes by hitting close to home. Will their gamble pay off? Read on to find out.

Unstable Ground: Disaster Strikes a Divided Family

The Abyss opens with an eerie scene: three teenagers drinking near the mines at night fall straight down a crevasse, swallowed by the earth. We soon learn why the ground is so unstable. The film introduces Frigga Lindberg (Tuva Novotny), a lifelong Kiruna resident who works for the mining company LKAB. As safety manager in the depths of Kiirunavaara Mountain, it’s her job to keep operations from triggering a cave-in below the city.

Frigga has her hands full above ground too in her personal life. She’s separated from her husband Tage (Peter Franzén), who heads the mining division. Their marriage collapsed alongside their family life with two teenagers: daughter Mica (Felicia Maxime), an activist railing against the dangers of mining, and son Simon (Edvin Ryding), who stormed off after a fight with his parents. On Simon’s birthday, Tage barges in looking for the boy while Frigga’s new boyfriend Dabir (Kardo Razzazi) is visiting, making tensions boil over.

But missing teens are soon the least of their worries. Alarming seismic shocks hit the mine, getting worse by the day. Frigga investigates only to discover a giant chasm below Kiruna, a ticking time bomb ready to swallow the city. When her crew gets trapped underground, she sound the evacuation alarm, working with Tage to rescue miners as everything sinks into the abyss.

On the surface, Mica searches desperately for her missing brother. Against harrowing scenes of destruction, the family tries to find each other, make amends for the past, and escape Kiruna’s wreckage. But the once-solid ground is fracturing fast, even as human conflicts stay stubbornly deep-rooted. Racing the clock, Frigga leads risky efforts to evacuate lives while her own family hangs in the balance.

Grounded in Reality: Authentic Characters and Modest Spectacle

While no blockbuster, The Abyss wisely plays to its strengths with a focus on realism and human-centered drama. This lends an air of authenticity that disaster flicks with more bombastic special effects often lack.

Much credit goes to lead actress Tuva Novotny, who anchors the film with her moving portrayal of Frigga. As a third generation miner, her connection to Kiruna resonates with hard-won authority. We believe she’ll fight through hell to save her hometown, even as conflicts with her family reveal inner damage. Novotny brings nuance and grit to the everywoman role. Whether calmly taking charge to organize evacuations or claustrophobically struggling to survive underground, her performance keeps us invested.

The film similarly grounds itself in the real-world logistical challenge of evacuating an entire town on the verge of collapse. Dramatic license is taken, but we witness the chaos and devastation on a credibly small scale: more a single flooded coal mine than magically crumbling Los Angeles. There’s no reliance on CGI spectacles to distract from thinly sketched characters. Instead, the special effects serve the story with judiciously used shots focused on the deteriorating mine and specific buildings sinking into rubble.

While not high-thrills, the disaster itself feels ominously plausible, building tension through the first half of the film. We track the early warning signs: trembling store shelves, car-swallowing sinkholes, instruments measuring subtle seismic disturbances that slowly crescendo. When the intensive destruction comes, it taps into visceral fears of the ground giving way beneath our feet.

The Abyss may not match big-budget destruction, but in portraying disaster on a human level, it rings painfully true. We identify with the panicked citizens of Kiruna – this could be our hometown violently cracking open. The smaller scale makes it feel like someone could save this city…but will they?

Soapy Distractions: Missed Opportunities Amid Melodrama

While the realistic approach generally serves The Abyss well, there are significant missed opportunities that diffuse the drama. Most glaringly, the heightened family melodrama often distracts from the disaster narrative instead of complementing it.

Frigga’s estranged husband and teen children certainly add emotional stakes, but the script leans far too heavily on their angst. There is endless bickering, bleak reveals about the dissolved marriage, and an oddly centered love triangle with Frigga’s new boyfriend. These writers’ room soap operatics drain tension rather than heightening it. The result is a disjointed Frankenstein monster, suturing screams about end-of-the-world destruction with cries of “you ruined this family!”

The disaster plot also suffers from predictability, relying on numerous genre clichés that sap intrigue. We check the expected boxes: scientist warning of coming catastrophe is ignored, boulder barely misses crushing stars running from explosions, lovers separated by falling debris reconnect for finale.

More disappointingly, the film fails to truly capitalize on the most fascinating aspect of its real-world inspiration: an entire city in the process of being relocated. Commentary about political protests and economic impact is limited to cursory mentions. Besides explaining the financial priority to keep mining, the script skips past complex dynamics of dismantling then rebuilding a town to focus myopically on one middle class family.

With many weak points, The Abyss offers the skeletal frame of a tense ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, but lacks enough meat on its bones. What should be an unrelenting race against an implacable force of nature dissolves into a parade of family therapy moments better suited for a snoozy small town drama. The result leaves a unsatisfying aftertaste.

Worth a Shot, Despite Missed Potential

At its best, The Abyss delivers gritty disaster drama grounded in reality, elevated by Tuva Novotny’s standout performance. The film builds palpable tension as catastrophe brews and Kiruna faces violent undoing. Modest visual effects convincingly depict the chaos and destruction on a limited scale. For fans of Scandinavian thrillers or anyone open to a grimily authentic take on the genre, it may provide an sufficiently intense ride.

Unfortunately, the film loses momentum halfway through thanks to the hackneyed family conflict commandeering center stage. There is entirely too much squabbling and angst, smothering the disaster storyline struggling underneath. The film fails to fully capitalize on its truly unique premise or addfresh twists to the formulaic plot. Key moments devolve into predictable thriller clichés.

While certainly no masterpiece, The Abyss still delivers a few thrills and chills worth checking out if this brand of disaster flick is your speed. Just brace yourself for some serious eye rolling when the action cuts away again to family members snarling bitter accusations about who ruined their lives.

If you can overlook the soap opera distractions, Novotny’s performance and the sinking city scenes almost make up for the lost potential. It’s not essential viewing, but may tide over disaster junkies between bigger budget blockbusters. The Abyss offers a serviceable enough adrenaline hit, but sadly collapses under the weight of its own self-inflicted melodrama.