20 Disaster Movies You Must See Before You Die

Tomb Raider director Roar Uthaug cut his ticket to Hollywood on the strength of The Wave, his 2015 thriller about an avalanche which creates a 300-foot tall tsunami in Norway.

Despite being made for literally a fraction of most American disaster films - a mere $6 million - The Wave doesn't leave audiences wanting for jaw-dropping spectacle.

The CGI water here isn't the best you'll ever see, but director Uthaug employs every devilish trick in the book to trick the audience, opting to convey the wider scale of the tsunami rather than the more challenging and expensive granular carnage.

Focusing on a smaller cast of characters than your typical disaster film and doing away with the goofy nonsense so abundant in the genre, this cuts straight to the point and is all the better for it.

Its sequel, The Quake, is also pretty solid, even if not directed by Uthaug, who was busy working on the aforementioned video game adaptation.