Force of Nature: The Dry 2:  Movie Review

Cast: Eric Bana, Anna Torv, Deborra-Lee Furness, Sisi Stringer
Director: Robert Connolly

The Dry was a gripping thriller that introduced audiences to another detective – Eric Bana’s Aaron Falk.

But whereas the first film had a compelling grittiness that had you on the edge of your seat during its mysteries, Force of Nature: The Dry 2 makes things too convoluted as it tries to juggle three narrative threads with varying degrees of success.

A simple central mystery – five women go on a corporate bush retreat in Australia but only four of them emerge – should prove enough for Falk and his massively underutilised partner to tackle, but Connolly’s direction of Jane Harper’s book battles flashbacks, cold cases and a race against time in a choppy story that never quite digs its way in as the first did.

Despite Falk’s past connection to the region where the women emerged, the involvement of a serial killer story and elements of corporate espionage, there’s simultaneously too much to juggle and yet somehow too little to sink audiences’ teeth into.

It doesn’t help that all threads are underwhelmingly pulled together thanks to once-over-lightly sketched characters rather than rich deep personalities – all the women are able to do is essentially screech at each other as their more brittle edges come to the fore. 

Despite wonderfully utilising the surrounding countryside and bush to harbour some kind of atmosphere (as the oppressive heat did in the first film), Connolly's The Dry 2 fails to capitalise on the richness of what lies around, instead relying on tropes and stereotypes to piece it all together.

Some of that could well be due to the source material, and much like the first film, there’s a garbled mess of exposition, reveals and twists in the final moments of The Dry 2 which don’t help matters.

A stoic Bana gets rare moments to excel as the theme of his guilt comes to the fore - but even he feels muted as the last act race's to resolve all the elements plays out giving him flashes of anger, humanity and fallibility. The throwing in more twists than a badly plotted Poirot even culminates in a scene of gathering suspects together in an isolated lodge - for those seeking homage to the greats, it’s fine, but for others, it’s a reminder how The Dry 2 very rarely treads its own path.

The final result is muted and muddled, and really while it's solid watching that's executed in a workmanlike manner, the resounding feeling is Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is not a patch on the first film’s rich, haunting themes.