The Midnight Sky Review: I Have to Contact Them

Prairie Grown Reviews is reader-supported. When you purchase something through our links we may earn an affiliate commission.

What an amazing movie.

What Happens in The Midnight Sky?

The Earth has hit its breaking point, and a catastrophic disaster is about to occur. As a result, everyone has to be evacuated to the only livable area in the galaxy, one of Jupiter’s moons. Augustine, who is terminally sick, decides his services would be better used staying on Earth. He positions himself for the end. After days of pointless existence, Augustine decides to try and reach out to the galaxy via his radio to see if he can be of assistance.

Who Are The Characters in The Midnight Sky?

Augustine Lofthouse is a brilliant scientist who discovers a planet called K-23 when he is younger that has the potential to be habitable by humans. Flash forward to 2049 we see Augustine as a much older man and the world is ending with most humans leaving earth but Augustine stays.

Augustine is a loner, he is quiet, and he’s a pretty big drinker but that is partly because he is dying. Sully is one of the crew members of the spacecraft Aether that is currently returning to Earth from K-23 after a two-year mission to see if humans could live there. Sully runs the communication part of the ship and we learn that she is an optimist, kind, clever and we also learn she is pregnant.

The Midnight Sky Review

Oh boy. What an amazing movie. Now, before this review starts, I’d like to mention that this movie is dystopian and has a very bleak outcome for the human race. But because of this tone and atmosphere, this movie delivers a strong story between the destroyed Earth and the Aether Mission.

Now, before I start explaining the beauty of this movie, the movie does have a pretty slow start and it’s hard to get invested in the story. Besides a slow start, the beginning is also a bit confusing, however, everything resolves itself by the end of the movie.

With that aside, let’s get into the positives.

The first great thing about this movie is the dystopian atmosphere and the bleakness of life. Movies that change the path of humanity, like Spiderhead, and invent lore and reality are super easy to get invested in. Take the dystopian and add a ticking clock, like we saw in Greenland, and you get a really intersting movie. At the beginning of the movie, we meet Augustine, a man who wishes to stay behind on the desolate planet to help anyone in need.

While the rest of the human population evacuates the planet, Augustine lives within one of the last surviving bases on the Earth’s surface. For three weeks, Augustine is barely living, just going through the motions until he gets a notice that there is still one active mission, Aether. From there, he gets the motivation to live and help this group.

After meeting the Aether crew, the next strength of the movie is displayed. The characters and their backstories are one of the strongest I have seen in any movie. The crew on Aether feels like a real family, and they interact with each other so well. Everything feels natural and flows nicely. Everything that happens to the crew displays their perfect chemistry together as a team. It also gives so much weight to all their actions throughout the movie. Their backstories also flesh out their personalities and create round characters, all with motivations and goals.

The final thing that enhances the realism of this movie is all the events in space. The way the characters float and survive in space, and how they move in space is realistic and adds to the overall realism and atmosphere of the movie.

Overall, The Midnight Sky is a movie I would heavily recommend. Getting past the slow beginning creates the framework for all the events that happen afterwards. From there, it is a rollercoaster of emotions.