Review of The Midnight Sky (2020) by Mbeckford — 30 Dec 2020

I love a good apocalyptic thriller but this was a complete yawner. Literally nothing happens on a frozen/torched earth (we never really know what caused the apocalypse) or on the space mission to find a habitable moon/planet. A mute girl shows up "suspiciously" to give Clooney something to worry about, and the usual tropes of traveling in space are the main source of drama there. (The reveal on that girl in the end I had pegged immediately and I'm really not that clever.).

Clooney plays against type as a soft spoken engineer sporting a full-on Santa beard wth a buzz cut. Felicity Jones is a pregnant astronaut with nothing much to do except worry a lot. The most interesting scene was a dream where she's on a potential habitable moon of Jupiter and the ship leaves without her. Now that would've made for an interesting flick, except it was already done with The Martian.