“Greenland 2: Migration” – 2 1/2 stars out of 4
Years ago after getting a copy for Christmas, I tried to read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” the following month. Suffice to say, early January is not the best time to dive into a post-apocalyptic wasteland where a lonely father and son have to trek across the wilderness under the constant threat of violent cannibals.
I got that same impression part way through Ric Roman Waugh’s “Greenland 2: Migration.” The bleak follow-up to 2020’s “Greenland” (which I must admit I missed five years ago) boils down to a family of three trying to cross a post-apocalyptic wasteland on the way to what they’ve been told could be the new birthplace of civilization. But they’ve got to get through a lot of violent geology and even more violent humanity first.
Gerard Butler plays John Garrity, one of the lucky survivors of Comet Clarke, which wiped out most of Earth’s population in the first film when its various bits impacted spots all around the globe. When the movie starts, John, his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin), and their son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis) have been surviving in a bunker in southern Greenland for five years alongside a couple hundred other traumatized people. But when an earthquake caves in the bunker, John and the others are kicked back into a world now full of nightmarish electrical storms, sudden debris showers, and an atmosphere only semi-interested in meeting breathing standards.
One of the scientists in the bunker had a theory that Clarke’s primary impact crater in France might offer the best chance of a livable environment, so when Greenland issues its eviction notice, the theory becomes more of a crater-or-bust situation. To get there, John and his family will have to cross an especially unfriendly Britain, then a drained English channel that looks more like something from one of the Lord of the Rings movies, and that’s all before France offers its own range of challenges.
The concept is sound, and when you consider that Waugh’s film is a sequel to a little-known disaster film getting a January release, “Greenland 2” isn’t too bad. But its execution is way too underdeveloped in the plot department, and its 98-minute run time suggests that a little more depth might have turned this into a much more compelling film.
Too often the pattern is to confront the Garrity family with a horrifying obstacle, then see them through it in a minute or two, before moving on to the next obstacle. Nothing seems all that difficult, at least for very long. And around the time they pick up a young French girl who just happens to be about Nathan’s age, after running into one of the only fellow survivors who isn’t interested in murdering them, you get the sense that “Greenland 2” is leaning a little too hard on coincidence to move its story forward.
The result is a better-than-you-would-expect movie that still feels like the first draft of a much better film. There’s some great potential here, and some weighty atmosphere that feels like it’s stretching to rise above the usual disaster film schlock. But its key moments need more meat on the bones to deliver the real meal.
“Greenland 2: Migration” is rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, and thematic elements.