THE MIDNIGHT SKY (2020) – George Clooney’s grim vision of the future

Spending two hours watching a bleak post apocalyptic tale that takes place not far in the future in 2049 is not about to lift your spirits while ushering the New Year. George Clooney directs himself as an ageing and terminally illed scientist who is supposedly the last living human on earth. He spends his final days in some sort Arctic science station trying to communicate to the crew of a spaceship that is about to return earth, not knowing about the catastrophy that has happened.

On the plus side, I would say that Clooney has an eye for details and story telling so despite the slow burn and gloomy atmosphere, he still manages to capture the audience’s attention. He also directs himself well. He is almost unrecognizable as the lonely, old and tired scientist. On the negative side, Clooney tends to take his time in telling the story. While this may not necessarily be a bad thing, here, this sometimes worked against him as the movie’s running time of just under two hours felt draggy. Several scenes on the events happening in the spaceship returning to earth would probably have benefited from some editing. One in particular was a drawn out sequence of the crew doing external repair work to the spaceship after it suffered damages from some sort of meteor shower. The flash back sequences did not work out too well for me either, and came across weak and familiar, offering very little to add to the Clooney character.

The Midnight Sky as I said is not an up lifting movie. In fact most of the time, events on screen seem so desolate and helpless that one can’t help but feel disheartened by the whole story. The slight glimmer of hope and sense of atonement provided at the end offers little to compensate for the overall depressing sentiments.