The Midnight Sky   ★★

Staring: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demián Bichir, Kyle Chandler, and Caoilinn Springall

Direction: George Clooney

Tagline: Hope finds a way.

George Clooney takes the helm both in front of and behind the camera in the Netflix movie The Midnight Sky, a plodding science fiction drama that doesn’t offer much convincing sci-fi or drama.

Two arcs come together to form the narrative of the film.

The first is set on Earth, where an unspecified apocalypse has made the radiation-contaminated planet uninhabitable. With most of the population wiped out, the survivors have moved to temporary underground shelters. Housed in an Arctic research station, poorly scientist Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney) – a loner obsessed with his work – is the only human who remains on the surface of the planet. To his surprise, he one day stumbles upon a silent young girl (Caoilinn Springall) who appears to have been left behind by the evacuees.

The second branch takes us to outer space, where a group of astronauts – commander Adewole (David Oyelowo), his pregnant partner Sully (Felicity Jones), and their colleagues Maya (Tiffany Boone), Sanchez (Demián Bichir), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler) – aboard the spaceship Aether are on their way back to Earth after an exploratory mission, having established the habitability of Jupiter’s moon K23.

The arcs converge when Augustine realizes that the crew of Aether are returning to Earth but are unaware of the dangerous state of the planet. He must then undertake a perilous trek across the tundra to reach a communication system through which he can warn the astronauts and stop them from coming home.

What should be a riveting adventure turns instead into a slow, dreary plod. Clooney’s performance certainly makes Augustine a compelling, tragic protagonist, but the events around him lack the requisite believability and emotional weight.

Pacing issues plague the proceedings as the characters face the various complications they run into while plot holes creep up often. A narrative meant to be thoughtful and ponderous should not fall apart under the very slightest level of scrutiny.

There are a few stunning sequences in the film – one involving droplets of blood easily stands out – but, on the whole, The Midnight Sky is too dull and unconvincing to make much of an impact. There are flickers of some exciting and poignant ideas here and there, but ultimately the proceedings disappointingly devolve into an unrealistic, unoriginal drama. As the tale crawls on, you can’t help but feel that there must be something far more interesting going on in this fascinating, albeit underdeveloped, post-apocalyptic world.

Rating system:  ★ Not on your life ★½ If you really must waste your time ★★ Hardly worth the bother ★★½ Okay for a slow afternoon only ★★★ Good enough for a look see ★★★½ Recommended viewing ★★★★ Don’t miss it ★★★★½ Almost perfect ★★★★★ Perfection