My mom kept raving about Greenland so I finally gave in and gave it a go as well. It’s a disaster movie of extinction level proportions but by its end, it felt the same way as it was in the beginning. I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

Synopsis: There is a lot of attention directed at the Clarke comet as it braces to impact the Earth. However, whether its a decision to prevent massive panic or miscalculation, the public was hugely unaware of its scale and magnitude until its 48 hours until actual impact. The turns out that it threatens to wipe out humankind much like a giant meteor eliminated the dinosaurs. Structural engineer John Garrity and his family Allison (Morena Baccarin) and Nathan (Roger Dale Flloyd) are selected for emergency sheltering but things get complicated when his son’s medical condition prevents them from boarding the flight out.

Greenland is a relatively quiet movie compared to Gerard Butler’s previous films. Don’t be misled by the trailer and the poster. The film is more of a family drama than a proper disaster film.

Sure, it goes through the motions to delve into the darkness of humanity once they are theatened with extinction. It has a family separated by the chaos, a kidnapping, a tussle that results in casualties, a mob, shoooting, and looting galore. It seems like director Ric Roman Waugh had a checklist of scenes to include in a disaster movie and went through each one.

There’s really nothing wrong with Greenland per se. However, because we’ve seen it all before, its hard to empathize with the plight of John’s family, even though technically, they went through hell and back just to survive.

One good thing about the film though, is that it may trigger the doomsday prepper side of audiences since it gets them to think what the absolute essentials are when preparing for this type of event. By its end, John and his family only had the shirts on their backs and their child’s medication and that was okay.

Greenland was a good movie on its own. However, it pales in comparison to other disaster movies before it in terms of scale and urgency. The drama was passable but not on the level of The Impossible. All in all, it was a pretty solid film, all aspects included.