Utøya 22. juli depicts the terrorist mass murder at the Norwegian summer camp in 2011. After a short opening depicting the bomb explosion in Oslo, we go to the island and in a 72 minute single take (the attack lasted 72 minutes) we follow Kaya, a girl who's at the camp with her sister when the massacre happens. The result is a movie that features a lot of running and lying on the ground, as she and others try to figure out what's going on. The film's depiction of the attack keeps perpetrator Anders Breivik off screen, the right-extremist instead is only heard by gun shots, and sometimes a distant dark silhouette.
Normally you'd feel a single take would be perfect to capture the anxiety and fear of the event, but director Erik Poppe makes the mistake of having the camera follow the action instead of having it lead it. The result is that the cameraman feels like a character on its own, constantly breaking the immersion because it is reacting to everything around it, from extras running past to constantly losing and trying to regain focus as it adjusts from far shots to close-ups. It's particularly bad after a scene of a group of the young adults running and diving down behind a large tree, when the camera itself plunges hard towards the ground, either because the director thought it would give you an idea of being there with the characters, or simply because the cameraman was exhausted from sprinting with a camera for a good 30 seconds. Whatever the intention or reason, it just looks amateurish and as such the decision to go with a single take ends up nothing more than showcase of every mistake you can make.
On the other hand the film does feature a strong lead performance of young actress Andrea Berntzen who shows off a tremendous amount of talent but has the trouble of being surrounded by some otherwise mediocre and sometimes outright terrible side actors.