The Midnight Sky is an ambitious failure of a movie. I really wanted to like it; it’s the kind of movie that’s built for me. A big idea science fiction film that champions humanity and accomplishment in the face of disaster. But, unfortunately, it fails in its writing and its pacing.

In the film, the planet has suffered an ill-defined global disaster leaving a dying George Clooney alone in an arctic base after its evacuated. He wants to contact a spaceship on its return to Earth but the base’s antenna isn’t powerful enough. Meanwhile, the astronauts aboard the ship don’t understand why they’ve lost all contact with Earth and proceed on their way home facing their own set of accidents.

Sadly, this movie has an overwritten storyline that struggles to find a point. There are many harrowing or interesting scenes that ultimately don’t seem to matter or affect anything in any meaningful way. If they’d been better directed with more ambition, thrills, or thought, that might have been ok… but the movie fails itself and its cast by just not finding the humanity it clearly wants to showcase.

I wanted to like this movie… hell, the movie wanted me to like this movie. But it couldn’t reach the raw emotional energy and humanity that it was striving for.

Score: 72