
An enjoyable aspect of being a critic is film assignments because some movies are forgettable unless one is forced to review them. “The Dry,” directed by Robert Connolly and based on the best-selling work by Jane Harper, appeared in 2021 as a gritty thriller in a somber atmosphere. The movie featured Eric Bana as police officer Aaron Falk who goes back home to a purpose that is drenched in mystery. Regrettably, “Force of Nature: The Dry 2,” which uses the second book in the “Aaron Falk” series Harper penned, also directed by Connolly, loses the plot literary and directorial. “The Dry 2” in the title is misleading, as it isn’t a sequel. It is a standalone, with Aaron as the only link between them. The film is quite good and well-acted, but this only makes it able to hint at complexity rather than possess it.
There is much potential in the plot. Five women attend a corporate retreat and as an icebreaker go hiking in a tropical rainforest presumably for the purposes of increasing teamwork (or something along those lines). When they come out of the rainforest, however, there are only four women. Each one climbed that dreadful hike, and I mean each has a story, a story that explores the fate of one woman that everyone is too shy to talk about. Melbourne cop Aaron Falk comes to the site to investigate together with his partner Carmen (Jacqueline McKenzie). For Aaron, this isn’t just a routine case as he has a connection with the ‘case’ on the professional as well as personal level.
There is the need to compare it with another Australian movie, Peter Weir’s, “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, two girls and their teacher simply vanished during a picnic, never to be seen again. Margaret Atwood’s evocative 1989 tale “Death by Landscape” tells an almost identical story. “Death by Landscape” frames these narratives very well which have in them simply too evocative or too picturesque or too poetic or too symbolic environments that they tend to overwhelm and consume people. The landscape in “The Dry” was placid but dry. The landscape in “Force of Nature” is overcrowded, wet, and green. Each of the two landscapes exacts a severe toll on the human beings that are unfortunate enough to enter them. Andrew Commis’ cinematography portrays the cataclysm in the rainforest with all its dimensions and sense of chaos.
The plot thickens when the characters are introduced and it becomes apparent that the head of Jill’s family was in fact married to a beast, Beth (Sisi Stringer), and the children ended up with Alice and Bree (Lucy Ansell), while Lauren (Robin McLeavy) is Alice’s sister, as far as I can tell it hasn’t been established how they are related. It’s a stretch to have two sets of sisters working in the same firm but never mind. The group’s spark is Alice, played by Anna Torv, who is described as the more intense and infuriating of the group. Nobody really finds her to their liking. When the women take a wrong turn, and they end up completely lost, instead of focusing on the issue at hand, they argue and bicker all the time wasting valuable time. These scenes are the edge of the seat especially because of the lingering question from “Picnic at Hanging Rock” What happened to Alice? Where did she disappear to?
As if the women on the retreat would be enough for one feature, “Force of Nature” adds more to the top. Aaron and his partner, the criminally under-used Jacqueline McKenzie in this role, have been following this company as part of a money laundering scheme and managed to recruit Alice as an informant inside. Everybody is aware. Nobody is aware she has been playing both sides but Aaron has a gut feeling that there is something questionable. And there is more.
As a young boy, Aaron had to deal with the pain and confusion of his mother going missing during a family hike in the depths of the rainforest. It’s not him but poor Alice who has still not been found whose representation dresses his memories and focalizes them so that he is able to relive them. The movie is cut in such a way to use three tracks chronologically. The camera sees Aaron and Carmen interrogating four women. The first traces the disaster in the first place. The last sequence goes even further in time, back to kid Aaron (Archie Thomson) with father Jeremy Lindsey Taylor and mother Ash Ricardo during the family picnic. This event had to happen some other time, when considering how in “The Dry” there are no mentions of Aaron’s mother’s disappearance which would change everything and her entire character as well. Such instances appear to be somebody’s horrible dream come true, they crank up the immersion into the unfolding events instead of giving away what is intended in the film.
The same structure was well developed in “The Dry”; Aaron continues struggling with flashbacks and the reality around him. It was both self-exploration and an engaging murder mystery. “Force of Nature” gets a lot of mileage out of What Happened to Alice? and the actors are intriguing too. Every character had a reason to wish to eliminate Alice. Whodunit? The film aimed for suspense, such as the multiple murders in the film, and many things were possible, which made one feel hope. If it wasn’t for all this other stuff annoying it, the suspense could have pulled the film to the last minute.
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