This The Midnight Sky review may contain minor spoilers…
Coming to us from director/star George Clooney, The Midnight Sky sounds compelling on paper. It takes place on a desolate Earth in the year 2049, three weeks after a mysterious apocalyptic event. Lone scientist and terminal cancer patient Augustine Lofthouse (George Clooney) is the only person who can warn astronauts returning from a potentially habitable moon about the disaster that awaits them. Unfortunately, The Midnight Sky’s exciting premise collapses under its own emotional weight and nonsensical narrative leaps.
It’s immediately established that Augustine is unwell – we see him receiving regular blood transfusions, taking medication, and vomiting into a toilet. He has opted to stay behind at an abandoned Arctic observatory after everyone else has left. They flee in a hurry during the film’s opening moments, but it’s not entirely clear where they’re going or why. Augustine’s reasons for remaining at the base aren’t explained either and this is a recurring issue for The Midnight Sky’s plot. There’s minimal elaboration on key story beats, and this becomes increasingly frustrating as the film plods through its 125-minute runtime.
Perhaps at the root of its narrative problems is the film’s reluctance to divulge anything about “the event” that caused the global catastrophe. All we’re given are some on-the-nose hints towards climate change and radiation. The Midnight Sky goes as far as to disrupt a radio conversation between two characters when the cause of the apocalypse comes up, which feels deliberately evasive. And with little explanation for the cataclysm, it’s hard to truly care about the events subsequent to it.
Before too long, Augustine finds a young girl – Iris – (Caoilinn Spingall) hiding in the observatory’s kitchen. Her family seemingly left without her. The relationship between Iris and Augustine is oddly frictional at first, but this quickly turns into the stand-in father routine that’s been done better elsewhere. There are some nice moments for sure, but it’s all by the book.
Running parallel to Augustine’s babysitting problems on Earth is spacecraft Æther’s journey back from K-23, a habitable moon of Jupiter. Its crew’s mission was to find out if this moon can support life and whether humans could one day live on its surface. Not much is shown or discussed of their time on K-23, but the visual of astronaut Sully (Felicity Jones) standing on its surface and observing a nearby Jupiter is entrancing. The rest of the team are comprised of Sully’s partner Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo), Maya (Tiffany Boone), Sanchez (Demián Bichir), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler). They’re likeable, but the film doesn’t spend much time exploring their backstories. Adewole was a maths prodigy, though, so there’s that, I guess.
When Augustine realises that Æther is the only spacecraft still active, he attempts contact to inform them of the situation at home. Only the observatory’s antenna isn’t strong enough to reach them, so he’s forced to journey with Iris through perilous conditions to a weather station at Lake Hazen (north of their current location). At this point, The Midnight Sky becomes a peculiar mash-up of the survival and science fiction genres. Both are competing for your attention and seem at odds with each other as we dart between the Earth and Æther. Creative liberties are certainly taken with Augustine and Iris’ trek and I’d be remiss to call the sequence realistic. Suffice to say, you might raise your eyebrow a few times. The pacing is off, too, and the dangerous expedition ends abruptly at what should be its mid-point.
To provide context to the present-day events, The Midnight Sky attempts to explore Augustine’s past through a series of short and unhelpful flashbacks. They’re vague and shoehorned in, however Gregory Peck does a great George Clooney impression. These scenes do offer some much-needed lore and are designed to build the emotional impact of the film’s later reveals, but they fall flat in their execution.
While the generic survival action on the ground isn’t anything to rave about, space is beautifully depicted here thanks to some excellent effects and convincing visuals. Likewise, Alexandre Desplat’s musical score is fittingly powerful and performances are strong across the board. Sadly, unspecific character motivations and their illogical decisions undermine the solid acting.
Having said that, The Midnight Sky is fine for the most part. There’s nothing egregious about it and space fans will undoubtedly enjoy some of the extra-terrestrial spectacle. But for anyone hoping for an epic, awe-inspiring end to this crappy year for film, this isn’t it. It’s no Interstellar, Gravity, or Ad Astra – hell, it’s not even a Sunshine. On the emotional front, The Midnight Sky swings for the fences and misses the mark. And with so much of it desperately trying to tug at your heartstrings, the movie’s plot regrettably takes a back seat.
Final score: 5/10
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The Midnight Sky will be available to stream on Netflix from 23rd December.
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Thank you to Netflix for providing a screener of The Midnight Sky for review.
Featured Image Credit: Netflix
