Greenland 2: Migration

Cast View all

	Gerard Butler	John Garrity
	Morena Baccarin	Allison Garrity
	Tommie Earl Jenkins	General Sharpe
	Trond Fausa	Adam Shaw
	Amber Rose Revah	Dr. Casey Amina
	Gina Gangar	Elizabeth Price
	Antonio De Lima	Charles Williams
	Peter Polycarpou	Dr. Haugen
	Beruce Khan	Mr. Singh
	Roman Griffin Davis	Nathan Garrity
	Megan Jacobs Shrivastava	Female Student
	Mitu Panicucci	Snarky Student
	Gísli Örn Garðarsson	Lars
	Sidsel Siem Koch	Pia
	Faraz M. Khan	Officer Bradley
	Nathan Wiley	Major Green
	Gordon Alexander	Lt. Blake
	Alex Lanipekun	Riley Watson
	Shayn Herndon	Steven Holt
	Rachael Evelyn	Kerri Holt
	Neil Bell	One-Eyed Man
	Andre Squire	Bunker Guard
	Lee Lomas	Bunker Guard
	Ken Nwosu	Obi
	Sophie Thompson	Mackenzie Matthews

Crew View all

Director	Ric Roman Waugh
Writer	Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling
Producer	Alex Ashworth, Brendon Boyea, Courtney Brock, Samuel J. Brown, Alastair Burlingham, Gerard Butler, Leifur B. Dagfinnsson, Pieter Engels, Noah Fogelson, Katie Geraghty, Basil Iwanyk, Daniel Kaslow, Louise Killin, Erica Lee, Gary Raskin, Sébastien Raybaud, Chris Ryden, Eric Sherman, Alan Siegel, Robert Simonds, Chris Sparling, Elin Mjoll Thorhallsdottir, Ric Roman Waugh, Paul Weinberg, Brandt Wrightsman, John Zois
Musician	David Buckley
Photography	Martin Ahlgren

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Edition details

Personal

Notes

My quick rating - 5.3/10. I was glad that Greenland 2: Migration picks up right where the first film’s end-of-the-world anxiety left off, opening with a quick recap of the comet catastrophe before dropping us into a radiation-decayed version of Earth that looks about as welcoming as a frozen landfill. The Garrity family is back, still alive, still stressed, and still making big decisions under impossible circumstances. Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin return as John and Allison Garrity, and Ric Roman Waugh is once again in the director’s chair, clearly committed to keeping this world as bleak and unforgiving as possible.

This time around, the hook is movement. After surviving in the bunker for five years, the Garritys are forced to venture out due to Mother Nature giving everyone a big reminder that she’s still in charge. John’s health is failing him, and since he knows he’s not going to last much longer, he becomes dead set on getting his family to the supposed safe zone near the crater. Why the crater would suddenly turn into some sort of Garden of Eden instead of being a smoldering hole filled with lava is quite a stretch, but you’re just supposed to go with it and move forward with the story, much like the characters do.

Visually, the film does a solid job selling a dead, frozen Europe. The environments are grim, empty, and convincingly miserable, which helps maintain that constant survival-movie tension. Unfortunately, the storytelling doesn’t always keep up. A rushed encounter in northern France introduces Denis (William Abadie) and his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery), who are quickly folded into the Garrity family’s journey like they were old friends bumping into each other at a local sports bar. Before you know it, they’re trekking through a literal war zone, which had me wondering. What in the world is everyone fighting over at this point? Resources? Territory? Immigration issues? Hell if I could guess.

Logic issues start to pile up the longer the journey goes on. The characters spend years terrified of radiation while living in a bunker, yet once they leave the island, nearly every place they travel through seems oddly radiation-free. That naturally begs the question of why staying underground for so long was such an absolute necessity in the first place. Then there’s the matter of fuel—because apparently gasoline is still plentiful enough to keep cars running across a shattered continent. It’s hard not to notice these things when the film leans so heavily on realism elsewhere.

Ultimately, Greenland 2: Migration isn’t a disaster, but it’s definitely a step down from the first film. The performances are perfectly fine, the world looks appropriately bleak, and it is still watchable. However, the writing and overall story feel less cohesive, with too many unanswered questions and logic holes to satisfy someone with a brain. It’s a sequel that moves forward geographically, but creatively, it is heading the other direction.

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