Greenland 2: Migration

• Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
• January 6, 2026 (Austria) / January 9, 2026 (US)

The Garrity family is forced from the Greenland bunker and trek across the devastated wasteland of Europe to possible safety in southern France.

Greenland was an enjoyable experience for me as it was for others based on how much it made AND that it justified a sequel. So, it was with great…anticipation I watched Greenland 2: Migration. After my experience I find myself conflicted over the film. I enjoyed watching but also found so much wrong with it.

While there is the Airport series connected entirely by George Kennedy as Patroni, Greenland is one of the few to receive a direct sequel. Beyond the Poseidon Adventure is a parallel film with events occurring at the same time. I think this was perhaps unnecessary since the closing moments of the predecessor pointed towards a better tomorrow giving us a complete story. By facing even more problems with massive survivor deaths, it undoes the hope we were left with.

Five years have passed since Clarke struck Earth and devastated the planet. We get an unnecessary recap of events. Not because bringing the audience up to speed is a waste but past events are referenced throughout the presentation as needed.

Keep in mind it has been five years and the governments of the world that had bunkers made no plans on taking ANYONE with a chronic condition like, say, diabetes which is what Nathan Garrity (now played by Roman Griffin Davis) has. It would stand to reason that the resources to make insulin would not be present nor would there be any already made being held in storage. If there was some present it most likely would have spoiled before the beginning of the movie. Considering the story eventually leaves the bunker his life is in an even more precarious state because nobody is ramping up a pharmaceutical company when all resources are limited.

Could the writers have given Nathan something mildly more manageable without meds but concerning enough for those making a post-apocalyptic survivor list to say he could not come? In Greenland when the Garritys arrived at the airport and it was learned of Nathan’s condition the family was given das boot. More annoying in Migration, despite moments of harsh reality, nobody ever suggests to Nathan he might die. His diabetes is largely ignored other than mom Allison (Morena Baccarin) twice telling him to not forget to carry as much insulin as he can.

Baccarin gets a bit shortchanged as an actress. Allison is clearly in a leadership capacity at the at the bunker but once they leave there, she takes a backseat to John (Gerard Butler). She spent a lot of the movie worrying about him and her son and protecting the child. Then again, this environment does not lend itself to her going off and getting some story of her own.

I must say this film needed more time. Many things are introduced and quickly abandoned or just not used like nearby survivors being brought to Thule Airbase. The leadership debates and says “Sure! We can take them” before earthquakes and a tsunami make the bunker useless and forcing abandonment. Nathan is clearly digging a girl in his class but never gives her a thought when she is quickly wiped off the table. Nor do his implied unauthorized outdoor excursions matter ever.

Director Ric Roman Waugh and writer Chris Sparling (with the assistance this time of Mitchell LaFortune) return but the same level of thought does not exist here as it did before. Nature as it stands is much more of a threat than people with the focus on big visuals. Survivors are implied to be desperate and dangerous, but we get more quakes and impacts and radiation storms than human savagery.

More time would have helped explain how people survived without bunkers. It looks like a good chunk did with numbers increasing as the cast gets further into Europe/closer to the impact. How does that work? Do all these people with no mass communication have access to the same info as the Garritys? How are these people eking out an existence? Where is the minimal food coming from? Where is the gasoline for the few vehicles we see coming from? Between fires and collapsed infrastructure everybody should be on foot. Agriculture of the most basic type should be very difficult.

I thought the story moved through the bunker a little too quickly. They didn’t spend too much time establishing any characters there or their poles. We had a few superficial instances but nothing too deep. Why? Because after they are forced out of the bunker because it’s falling apart, we lose most of the people in the bunker aside from a small crew who got on a lifeboat that we see in the opening.

Those from the last film are the best drawn characters but they are the core cast. They essentially have plot armor so we are never really worried about them. We need to care about the sacrificial lambs before they die but while some deaths are abrupt, we never get to know them enough to care.

Our longest surviving character that does not have the last name of ‘Garrity’ is Dr. Casey Amina (Amber Rose Revah) who spends most of her time pushing that the Clarke Crater is the place to be because it may be naturally protected from all the nastiness with the bonus of the soil being extra good for new life. She is clinging to that hope though there is one other with a plausible sounding bit of science.

Who is the other hopeful? That person ladies and gentlemen is John Garrity. He dreams of a safe place to take his son because the bunker is not only a turd, but he wants Nathan to have a life rather than simply surviving. He adds a bit of a ticking clock because doing duty as a scout has made him sick and his illness is progressing.

Gerard Butler is pretty normal as John. No great of feats of physicality or strength. He’s guided by his brains and heart playing a desperate father very well. Like before there is more intelligence than brawn when handling a situation. I appreciate attempts to keep him grounded even in extreme circumstances.

The closer they get to the crater the more wonderful it gets talked about like those speaking have seen it or know someone that has. Not sure how that happened but anywho. The thing is the crater is revealed to be in a warzone with two sides fighting for control of the resources. We never get into how both sides have the relative same goal where only one is the baddie. It also implies the crater is not too good of a spot depending on who wins.

I cannot lie. This is a very flawed movie, but I think as much as it gets wrong, it gets plenty right. The special effects look good. There are a few moments of obvious green screen in scenes where filming actors in those places for real would be a no-no. I’ll be darned if I know how they did the more intimate shots in the city and some of the other environmental stuff. It looks too real to be fake.

One of the strongest moments for me was when the Garritys try to cross the English Channel. The English Channel remember is no longer a patch of water but dry land. Spanish galleons or other ships are now on the surface. It drove home how much the world changed.

Moments like that or the focus on destruction over substance which I derided are also a reason I do like this film. I have a soft spot for large scale destruction. There is visceral entertainment in watching people barely surviving or meeting death shockingly abrupt. Then there is turning our familiar world into a very alien landscape. Our home is now the alien world.

I did greatly enjoy Greenland 2: Migration even if I think it could’ve been better. It certainly had some issues that could’ve been fixed by more time. Enjoyable but less than it could have been.