THE MIDNIGHT SKY: An Intriguing, Yet Underwhelming Sci-Fi Spectacle

It’s safe to state that George Clooney‘s run as a director has been quite perplexing. The actor has given plenty of noteworthy performances throughout his expansive career, but his attempts at taking the director’s chair have been largely inconsistent, to say the least. His earlier efforts have certainly been more well-received than his later works, and that trend sadly continues with his latest feature The Midnight Sky, based on the novel Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. 

The Midnight Sky follows Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), a scientist who has dedicated his entire life to his body of work and currently resides on an arctic base after a global catastrophe has devastated the Earth. The film drops the viewer right into the middle of the action, as the remaining citizens of the planet are evacuating, and Lofthouse is preparing to stay behind, seeing any attempts of leaving as futile due to his terminal cancer diagnosis. One day, he comes across a young girl named Iris hiding in the station and, seeing no other options, begins to take care of her, while at the same time attempting to reach contact with Aether, the only active space mission remaining after returning from finding a habitable moon near Jupiter. Aether has no clue about what happened to Earth in the time they were away, and Lofthouse finds it increasingly difficult to find a signal. He and Iris subsequently embark on a journey to reach a more powerful antenna that they hope will patch them through to Aether, but trouble soon arises.

Clooney‘s latest outing is undoubtedly far from the worst science-fiction movie in recent years, but it ultimately does falter in many respects, especially in regards to its uninspired, frequently tedious, and relentlessly predictable screenplay. He desperately tries to elevate this story from the ice-thin material he has to work with, but rarely does The Midnight Sky make any semblance of an impact, whether that be in the form of a narrative standpoint or an emotional one.

Narratively Disjointed

Structurally, The Midnight Sky is indisputably one of the weakest films of the year. While it begins promising, the arrangement of the narrative slowly reveals itself and the film itself quickly unravels as a result. Clooney sets it up fairly straightforwardly, introducing the viewer to the world of the story in ways many filmmakers are afraid of doing, and sadly, it’s clear why. He jumps right in and leaves little room for exposition, but this type of setup simply doesn’t work here. The viewer is left with a plethora of questions and not enough time to process them, but unlike other examples of this format of the opening sequence (most recently, Christopher Nolan‘s Tenet comes to mind), there’s not enough interest gathered from these introductory moments to warrant such an audacious inception. Sadly, the rest of the film doesn’t fare much better either.

We’re not given much of a reason to care about these characters, but at least Clooney‘s character and the young girl he takes under his wing have strong enough chemistry to keep their segments afloat, with Clooney, in particular, delivering a strong performance. For a while, The Midnight Sky peters along pretty decently, primarily due to a sharper focus on Clooney‘s character in the first half. There are moments on occasion that flash to the Aether team, and while their fragment of the story is substantially less interesting, the choice to center on Clooney‘s arc while somewhat balancing the Aether storyline makes sense, and it’s acceptable in the grand scheme of things. However, the story makes a drastic shift in what it chooses to center on in the back half, disrupting the already unsteady pacing and further sending the film to its doom.

It’s clear that Clooney was visibly trying to gauge something out of this irrefutably hollow story, but there’s not much he can do when the movie turns into something completely different an hour in and practically abandons his story in favor of a much blander one. You can tell the other actors here are trying their best to elevate this empty shell of a script just as much as he is, but the problem is that we know nothing about their characters, and, as such, simply cannot feel for them, even as we watch them endure various plights.

Emotionally Weightless

Tying back into the film’s narrative incoherency, The Midnight Sky is one of the most emotionally subdued films of the past few years. It always appears as though it’s grasping for even the most minute approximation of emotional resonance, yet barely cracks the surface. There are moments where, with a more consistent script and a stronger emotional tie to the characters, this film could’ve delivered something truly special, but it falls flat so often because there’s zero heart to the story. Throughout the film, there are plenty of scenes that clearly intend to provoke a moving response, yet simply can’t gauge that from the audience as a result of how empty it feels as a whole.

After a slog of a second act, the ending does its best to provide some closure but falters because of how physically drawn-out the buildup is, compared to how marginal it is from an emotional standpoint. If there had been more meat on its bones, this ending might have played a little better, but even that wouldn’t have saved it from a ridiculous twist that’s as hilariously out-of-place as it is terribly predictable.

The cast is certainly worth commending for their attempts to salvage this thing, because they really do try, but by the time any of them can even make a solid effort to do so, the film’s already too far gone. It’s a massive disappointment because the film certainly had potential, but all of that disappears rather soon despite Clooney‘s conscious efforts to deliver an impactful experience.

Technically Spectacular

Yet, if there’s any one saving grace of the latest addition to the seemingly endless slew of mind-numbingly dense studio science-fiction films, it’s the visual effects. From a visual perspective, The Midnight Sky is one of the absolute most gorgeous films of 2020 and one that will surely scoop up nominations for its visual prowess come awards season. While the material surrounding it is far from meaningful in any particular way, the visuals are often enough to carry particular scenes that primarily rely on them to tell the story.

The production design is also quite impressive, providing a firm backdrop for the characters and their locale, and for what it’s worth, adding a fine layer of engagement to the material even when the story feels distant. There’s an explicit sense of dread and coldness that envelops many of these environments, and the sets elevate this to greater heights, combining forces with Martin Ruhe‘s bleak, yet expressive cinematography to shape a metaphysical world that feels more lived-in than many of its counterparts. While this ultimately can’t save the movie, it does make it more watchable in the long-run.

Conclusion

The Midnight Sky is another example of something that could’ve been a complex and emotionally affecting work of science-fiction but quickly collapses in on itself. For a movie that’s decently engaging for much of its first act despite a handful of visible, yet excusable flaws, it’s a shame how rapidly it falls victim to a further cesspool of issues in its back half. It’s not a terrible movie, far from it, really. It’s simply a painfully mediocre experience that falls flat on levels where it had a solid amount of potential. Clooney is great in his role and if the script had balanced his arc and the other elements of the story more evenly, it could’ve functioned better as a cohesive whole.

Ultimately, this was a promising movie that, had it focused on the more compelling elements of its narrative, could’ve delivered an introspective look at mortality, death, and loneliness, but unfortunately chose to shift its course in a less interesting direction, swiftly sending itself into a downward spiral. What a disappointing mess.

Have you seen The Midnight Sky yet? What did you think? Let us know in the comments.

The Midnight Sky is currently streaming on Netflix.

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