Greenland 2: Migration is a lousy sequel to an equally lousy film that didn't need one.
It continues the adventures of the most selfish family in recent cinema history, yet has so little to offer that it feels like stitched together scraps of a discarded draft. For all its faults, the first film was at least unintentionally funny. The sequel barely registers a guffaw.
The story picks up five years after the apocalyptic destruction caused by the comet Clarke, which hit the planet at the end of the first film. The Garrity's, our "heroes", survived by complaining loudly to anyone who will listen, throwing others in harms way, and holding an entire plane of people hostage. In the end, they made it to Greenland, where the closest survivable shelter was in place.
But the shelter wasn't designed for long-lasting safety. After five years, it is breaking apart at the seams. The planet in is also in a state of flux. Constant meteor showers and freak electrical storms appear unannounced. Fissures reveal volcanic activity below the surface. The world is tearing itself apart.
On the radio, other survivors speak of the Promised Land that has formed in Clarke's impact crater. There, life has flourished again, and somehow none of the storms or meteors affect it like everywhere else. When the Greenland shelter collapses, the Garrity's steal everything they can, cast other survivors to their deaths, and escape with a few chosen folks they've apparently never bothered to learn about in their five years underground.
Their destination lies in the south of France. Along the way, the Garrity's learn the crater's surrounding areas have turned into a perpetual warzone. One military holding back all the others attempting to pursue a life in paradise. Only those chosen are allowed in, the rest will die horribly in the radiation infested wasteland.
Naturally, this prospect of a gated community appeals to the Garrity's even more. On the road, they encounter people who fall over themselves to help our awful protagonists, and usually end up killed just so the Garrity's can progress a little further without the slightest bit of hardship.
I'm not entirely certain if any of this is intentional. A better filmmaking team would have leaned harder on the satire of it all. Now, it comes off as exceedingly tone deaf. Like the writers and director don't even notice they're doing any of it.
For example, at one point, John (Gerard Butler) demands a ride from a man attempting to flee from an incoming storm. The driver asks for a payment, John's ridiculously expensive watch that he still carries and somehow still works. Less than ten minutes later, the driver dies as his necessity for the plot runs out, and John immediately loots his watch back. There's no indication it is important to him or that he feels bad about this. It just comes as naturally as breathing.
Elsewhere, look how Allison (Morena Baccarin) still wears designer clothing, jewelry and perfect makeup five years into the apocalypse, and how silly her crocodile tears about how hard life is feel in relation to it.
In another sequence almost worthy of the first film, the Garrity's meet with a heavily wounded militia. Their leaders are dead, everyone is wounded, and the fighting has continued for years. Everyone is tired, but they're doing their job to keep their land safe. The Garrity's explain they're heading for the Promised Land. The captain sighs, not unkindly, that hundreds arrive all the time. Many wait for weeks for a chance to go. There is a system.
Not for us, the Garrity's exclaim! We have to go now. Don't you understand, we are entitled to. Isn't there someone higher up we could complain to about this? The captain looks at them in their designer clothes and expensive watches and realizes his mistake. These are wealthy people, of course they can go first.
Beyond this insanity, Greenland 2: Migration is so lifeless and mundane it barely registers. It hits every single trope in the disaster film playbook and does so without any wit or imagination. Director Ric Roman Waugh stages each sequence with the same flat energy regardless if it's a disaster or a momentary respite among friends. Not a single visual or idea captivates. Instead, they serve as reminders to the countless of other films of in genre that did it better.
Out of the two Greenland movies, the first one is the better picture simply because it is so outlandish. If you find the idea of a family demanding to see the manager in the face of the apocalypse, you'll get plenty of laughs out of it. There's a tremendously hysterical scene where the Garrity's hold an entire plane hostage that's framed as a heroic family triumph. It must be seen to be believed.
Greenland 2 has none of that unintentional energy. It moves from one scene to the next without highs or lows until it ends with a narration so bafflingly out of place that it almost earns a chuckle. It's a soporific way to spend two hours, and lord knows there are far better and cheaper ways to sneak in a nap these days.
