Given that it takes places in the overgrown Australian wilderness, calling this unexpected sequel to The Dry (from 2020) “Forces of Nature: The Dry 2” is kind of like the title “The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia”. As in, why is this a sequel and why does it borrow from the original title when this film has little to do with that title?

Not that it matters. This is sequel to The Dry… a pretty good Australian mystery starring Eric Bana (it’s bananas – B-A-N-A). I’m not sure who – outside of Australians maybe – was demanding a sequel to a movie that most people haven’t heard of… but here we are.

Bana stars as a detective working white-collar crime when his inside woman (Anna Torv) goes missing on a team building multi-day hike in the Australian wilderness. The other women are rescued so search parties are sent out as they are interrogated.

I was very engaged in this film for its first two acts. But once they start to unravel the mystery, the film loses ground. I didn’t find the explanations and revelations satisfactory. It’s not bad but it gets a little drawn out.

More importantly though, Bana’s investigation of white collar crime doesn’t have enough detail to care about. I’m here for the lost women and what really happened but the film thinks I’m here for vaguely explained corporate crime. Plus Bana gets a backstory that takes up too much screen-time and doesn’t resolve anything in the movie itself. It’s underwritten and unnecessary.

But, hey, at least the flick looks good… you can squeeze a whole hellofalotof production value out of Australia’s damp, rainy, overgrown wilderness. And this forested location operates in the same manner as the dry, dusty desert in The Dry. I think the title is silly but at least I see what they were going for.

I think there’s enough solid, damp mystery thriller going on here but it would have been better if they’d condensed the script (or turned it into a 6 part series on Netflix). But even with an underwhelming resolution and too much subplot, the film has merit. It’s pretty good.

Score: 79