Greenland 2: Migration Trades Urgency for Nonsense

Greenland 2: Migration

★ ½

Greenland 2: Migration feels like a movie thrown together to fill the January off-season theatrical slot. It starts off slow, and despite some nonsensical action scenes, manages to get more boring as it goes.

In the previous film, the stakes were high and the mission clear. John Garrity (Gerard Butler) must find a way to get his wife Allison (Morena Baccarin) and son Nathan (Roman Griffin Davis) to a bunker in Greenland before a planet-killing comet collides with Earth.

The film starts with John searching for food and resources outside the bunker while Allison is on a committee that is deciding whether they should send a rescue team to find people stranded on the outside. John races against an electromagnetic storm—on foot, mind you—barely getting back to the bunker in time. He wears a mask and a hazmat suit, because the air is unbreathable and the environment is saturated with radiation.

Gerard Butler as John, Morena Baccarin as Allison and Roman Griffin Davis as Nathan
© 2026 Lionsgate

From the get-go, the movie raises some questions that defy the set-up from the first film. The survivors were chosen to go to government shelters based on skill and profession, like doctors, engineers and scientists. So how are there so many survivors so close to the Greenland bunker when bunkers were scarce in the first film?

John, Allison and Nathan have been living and serving in their bunker for five years. The bunker is showing signs of wear and one of John’s jobs is to help with repairs. We’re barely in the bunker before the structure fails and everyone must evacuate to small boats on the seashore nearby. It’s everyone for themselves as the entire bunker population tries to get inside one of the vessels. Set aside the human stampede. Who made sure the little boats were in place and secured despite the many devastating storms that have been battering the planet for half a decade?

The family makes their way onto a boat, finding one that happens to have three seats left, closing the doors on the next person. Sorry number four, you’re out of luck. They decide that London might be a safe place to travel to so they head off in that direction. But the boat’s captain didn’t factor in fuel, so halfway through the journey, they have to rely upon the current and pray the food supply doesn’t run dry.

When they get to London, there are swarms of people trying to get into a military facility. Only people with bunker badges are allowed in—anyone else who tries to enter is promptly shot.

Never mind the air isn’t breathable across the pond in Greenland and forget about the high levels of radiation. These people don’t seem to know—or care—about any of that.

Morena Baccarin as Allison, Gerard Butler as John and Roman Griffin Davis as Nathan
© 2026 Lionsgate

The family is trying to get to the spot where the comet hit because one of the Greenland scientists believes that life has begun to grow back there. Somehow, they believe that a paradise may have developed.

Maybe. In theory, the crater could have formed a microclimate by creating its own distinct environment. But in five years?

Why are there so many people without gas masks, never mind the reckless exposure to the radiation? It’s okay though—the script informs us through haphazard dialogue that certain areas have breathable air and tolerable radiation levels.

I’m being snarky here. It’s hard not to be when a film gives you one nonsensical scenario after another.

This film takes all of the high-concept tension and action dished out in the first film and serves us a plate of one boring scene after another. It really does feel like it was pieced together just to flicker on a lonely theater screen in winter. By the time the credits rolled, I didn’t care if paradise was real or not. I just wanted the names and titles to rise from the bottom of the screen.