The Midnight Sky: A Bleak Ending

The Midnight Sky Is About What Is Left After Loss

The Mightnight Sky is bleak. A sense of loss, sadness, and more just permeates every moment of this movie. Even the biggest moment of levity made me tense, not relieved. And you really have to be in the right headspace to enjoy it.

But, if you are in such a headspace, it’s an amazing film. Full of so much to praise and so much to analyze. It’s also—oddly—a great companion piece to Paradise; you could almost think of them as two sides of the same initial story.

This Is The Part Of These Plots Not Always Shown

Speaking of which, here’s the premise: The Midnight Sky takes place after some kind of apocalyptic event. Something involving radiation. I’m being vague, not because of avoiding spoilers, but because the movie doesn’t tell you what happened. It was apparently an “accident,” and it’s spreading and will, without a doubt, kill every single person on Earth within a very short time frame.

And thus, the story splits between two different perspectives. We have a scientist and a small girl in a shrinking safe zone and a crew of five astronauts on a space flight that just so happened to spare them from whatever happened on Earth. But the crew also doesn’t know about it yet and are on a deadly return course.

The Midnight Sky Gets So Much Out Of Its Premise

And if that makes you tense, then this movie is not going to give you a single moment of calm. This is a sci-fi action film with no real villains. It’s a survivalist story with almost no hope of survival. But the character work and tiny hopeful options keep The Midnight Sky incredibly engaging. The tone is so set to just pure tragedy that nobody quite feels like they have plot armor. At almost any point, almost any character could die, and that is not something a lot of movies even attempt.

This is also helped by how good the acting is in The Midnight Sky. If you’ve ever wanted to see so many different expressions of grief and longing for what was lost in one movie, then this is the film for you. Everyone is remarkably human but also trying to maintain some level of professional decorum—likely to stave off panic. As bleak as it is to say, people don’t always directly address death—even when it’s staring them in the face—and a few specific moments of dialog are understated gut punches because of this. Again, you really shouldn’t watch this movie unless you’re in a very specific headspace—because it will linger with you. It’s not your traditional, feel-good science fiction movie.

The Midnight Sky Has So Many Impactful Moments

It does, however, look like a blockbuster science fiction movie. The CGI and practical sets all look really good. The spaceship is this big, multi-layered thing, spinning as it moves, and though I have no idea if it’s accurate to what spaceflight might look like, it certainly feels real enough for this movie. From blizzards to radio stations to floating outside a spaceship, people took a lot of time and care to make sure that nothing booted the audience out of this sad, sad scenario.

So, yes, I do recommend this one. The Midnight Sky is a story about the end of the world that really treats that with the weight you would expect. It’s a movie that doesn’t break its own logic or tone. It hides plot points and interesting ideas among its more predictable structure, making it better and better as it goes. Though the end product won’t please everyone, I think it’s a wonderful piece of art.  

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