5 years ago, the world ended… and their 7-year old son is now inexplicably 15.

Tapped to rebuild civilization after rogue comet “Clarke” wipes out 75% of Earth’s population, John Garrity (Gerard Butler) is still living in the Greenland shelter long past the original estimates of the world becoming habitable. Radiation storms, poisonous air, and chunks of the original comet still crashing down from orbit are weighed against dwindling supplies, overcrowding, and a crumbling facility, but there’s hope! The original impact crater might inexplicably be a new Eden, where everyone is good, nothing bad ever happens, and modern medical supplies sprout from the ground like magic… probably. With his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and their insulin-dependent diabetic son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis), John leads the way through boring exposition, predictable VFX dangers, and plot armor to reach the aforementioned Promised Land. Credits!

The original Greenland film was watched on PPV during the 2020 quarantine, above average for a Deep Impact redux, spending equal time running from sequences of impending doom while dealing with the minutia of being given a chance to live. It asked a lot of relevant questions about favoritism, survival, and acceptance, especially during a time when surviving COVID was on everyone’s mind… but hey, at least the world’s not blowing up, right? The curious part of greenlighting this sequel was thinking there was anywhere the story could even go; the ending of the original was about as hopeful as this premise could muster. With the main actors returning and five studios scraping together production costs, Migration was reportedly set for a March 2025 release date before being shelved indefinitely… until now. Is it once again time for Gerard Butler to save us all?

Worst adaptation of Fallout ever. After mandatorily undoing the first film’s “we’ve got a lot of work ahead” ending, the details and complications of surviving a poisoned Earth are quickly mentioned and subsequently discarded like bad pages from a draft script. Characters need to use filtered masks… until they don’t. Gather up all the unrefrigerated insulin that can be carried… but will never use. “How long does it take to float from Greenland to Europe?” will be a funny Google search. There could be an outside force — divine, perhaps — somehow at work in all this, but it really feels more like bad writing. Was a committee formed to assemble a bulleted wish list combining story beats from the first Greenland with dashes of better post-apocalyptic films, alternately helped or hindered by each character they meet by dumb luck? With ragtag armed forces protecting nothing of value, battalions fighting for no apparent reasons, and insurgents popping up like bad rolls on a random encounter table, there are zero stakes and nothing clicks. By the end, it all feels like one Biblical allegory after another and a complete waste of time.

The best thing about Migration is the future possibility of RiffTrax/MST3K getting their hooks into this rotten meat. At one point, the family crosses a chasm using a makeshift rope/wire bridge like an Indiana Jones ripoff while previously nonexistent jet-thrust gusts of wind abruptly try to blow them off of it. In a hilarious attempt to appear even more dangerous, background characters are also shown plummeting from crossings farther across. Not enough? Once our heroes make it (of course), there’s a second flimsy aluminum stepladder bridge, lashed together with piecemeal clothing and affixed to nothing on either end! Disaster films end once characters escape the certain dooms they’re running from, but when a random rock from an orbital ghost ring around the Earth could fall and strike you dead at any time, how safe is anywhere on the surface? Speaking of which, how are all the military satellites working (or even still up there) where there’s a literal asteroid field ringing the planet?!

Bad science has a traditional place in disaster fiction when everyone’s in on the joke; Armageddon, 2012, or more recently Moonfall, for example. For dramatic fare like Deep Impact or Annihilation, filmmakers have to bring in the hard science to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, Migration is factually foolish in addition to being dreadfully dull. If you’re a fan of the original Greenland movie, don’t ruin it by enduring this.

Greenland 2: Migration is rated PG-13 for some strong violence, bloody images, action, and wasting the talents of Amber Rose Revah.

Zero skull recommendation out of four