The Impossible
Direction: Juan-Antonio Bayona
Actors: Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor
Rating: ****
Spanish director Juan-Antonio Bayona, whose only previous feature was the haunting horror flick The Orphanage (2007), now plunges the viewer into the cascading calamities of a natural disaster.
A spectacularly filmed tale of the ordeal suffered by a family caught up in the tsunami which hit the south-east coast of Asia in 2004, The Impossible is enthralling.
The tragedy is conveyed while focusing on one family’s struggle. A British couple and their three sons (the fictionalised alter-egos of a real-life Spanish clan) are on vacation in Thailand when the tsunami strikes.
The mother (Watts) and the eldest boy (British teenager Tom Holland, making an astonishing acting debut) ride out the tidal wave. Meanwhile, her husband (McGregor) sets out to find his family.
Combining suspense and intense characterizations, Bayona has fashioned a disaster drama that lingers.