Review: 'The Midnight Sky' is Neither Grounded Nor Space Worthy

Netflix's George Clooney-directed sci-fi nugget "The Midnight Sky" has a terrific premise: The Earth's population (human and animal alike) is being annihilated by catastrophic changes to the atmosphere. An astronomer at an observatory in the Arctic Circle stays behind as everyone else heads back home to certain doom in the comforting company of their families; he's already dying of a terminal disease, he has no family, and the observatory is home to him as much as anywhere else.

This man is named Augustine, and he's played by Clooney. He's also played, in flashbacks, by Ethan Peck, whose sci-fi creds derive from his role as Spock on "Star Trek: Discovery" (and the upcoming spinoff/prequel "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds"). When Augustine discovers that a child, Iris, has been left behind in the rush of the panicked evacuation, he grudgingly accepts the responsibility of looking after her.

Meantime, out in space, the five-member crew of an exploratory mission to a moon of Jupiter is headed back to their home planet. They are puzzled at the radio silence they're getting, but they have no idea that a global catastrophe has occurred. When Augustine - whose own work as a young man laid the groundwork for their mission - realizes that the ship is approaching Earth, he decides to take Iris and travel to a distant weather research outpost with a more powerful radio transmitter, which will allow him to contact the ship and warn its crew to avoid landing on Earth.

The film's two stories unfold in parallel. One is a harrowing earthbound tale of survival in the face of desperately harsh conditions and long odds, as Augustine and Iris brave packs of Arctic wolves, battle the unforgiving elements, and encounter a downed jet and its (mostly) dead passengers. The other is a mishap-laden, and strangely larky, space opera in which cometary debris and navigational problems pose potentially lethal threats, and the specter of fear and doubt about what's happening on Earth hangs over everyone's heads.

The film doesn't manage to merge the two plot threads in an effective emotional manner; the tonalities of the two settings and storylines are too drastically different so that the stories jar against each other without gelling. The connections between them are too slight, despite a late-breaking, and unforeseen, bond that both dramas share.

Part of the problem is an overall lack of believability. The film avoids any detailed explanation as to what went wrong on Earth; when the crew of the spaceship gets a look at their home planet, the world looks like it's been mustard gassed. The globe is ragged, its atmosphere discolored and distorted. But the terrifying sight holds no greater weight than its CGI presentation when the film plays so coy with the specifics: Augustine tries to explain it to the crew of the ship, but his voice is lost in a sudden wash of static.

The science of space exploration is treated even more cavalierly, with the film assuming the existence of a previously-unknown, mysteriously habitable Jovian moon, where "the air is so crisp" and the landscape is reminiscent of that in Colorado. (It's not, actually, though the CGI in this case, too, is stunning.)

The film is based on a novel, "Good Morning, Midnight," by Lily Brooks-Dalton, and it's a valid choice for literature - or films - to sidestep pesky realities in favor of dramatic effect. In fact, science fiction does this all the time. But the movie adaptation doesn't take us as deeply into the minds of its characters (except for Augustine, whose memories and dreams we explore) as it needs to in order to distract us from settings that are fundamentally unearthly, even when they are located on Earth. The "alternative facts" in this fictional reality feel too disparate and glaring, and it's a hard task to suspend disbelief.

Each of the film's storylines has its compelling moments - particularly Augustine and Iris' Arctic adventures - but overall "The Midnight Sky" feels like a project that can't make up its mind. Earth or sky? Hard-fought survival in the snow, or high-flying space adventure? This story needed either a larger canvas - to be a miniseries, maybe - in order to accommodate everything it's trying to stuff into a couple of hours, or else to choose one setting with greater purpose and clarity. Clooney juggles the two with technical dexterity, but much of the film's emotional impact bleeds away through the gap.

"The Midnight Sky" streams at Netflix starting Dec. 18.