The arid landscape of the fictional Australian town Kiewarra lends the 2020 mystery thriller “The Dry” its name and identity. It’s the type of place filled with interpersonal tension, which frequently reflects onto a barren, sun-scorched environment itching to go up in flames.
When federal agent Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) returns to his hometown to look into the double murder-suicide supposedly perpetrated by his childhood best friend, he’s thrust back into the town’s powder-keg energy. Everyone looks at him with suspicion because they suspect he was responsible for the drowning of his high school girlfriend twenty years prior, with their resentment exacerbated by his off-the-books investigation. Adapted from Jane Harper’s procedural mystery novel by the same name, “The Dry” marinates in buried backcountry secrets and childhood trauma, both of which unfortunately never transcend their generic function or presentation on screen.
Four years later, the awkwardly titled sequel “Force of Nature: The Dry 2,” adapted once again from a novel by Harper, arrives in theaters boasting many similar elements from the first film. Bana returns as Falk to investigate the disappearance of Alice Russell (Anna Torv), a woman who has gone missing on a corporate hiking retreat through the wetlands, rendering the film’s subtitle a bit of a cheeky misnomer. Falk has coerced Alice into becoming a whistleblower against her will to expose her boss’ money laundering scheme and he suspects something has happened to her as retaliation. Now, he and his partner (Jacqueline McKenzie) must grill the four other women on the retreat, sifting through various acrimonious feelings and secrets to figure out what happened out there while the local police search the area to find Alice.
While “The Dry” was anchored by Bana’s performance, with the native Australian actor frankly carrying the film through its various twists and turns, the sequel successfully allows other actors to help shoulder that burden. “Force of Nature” routinely flashes back to events from the retreat where Alice and the crew quickly become lost after taking a wrong turn, contend with sustained injuries, and struggle to find shelter. The film shines during these survival-adventure scenes, not only because of the inherently stressful nature of their predicament, but also because writer-director Robert Connolly and DP Andrew Commis convey the land’s eerie, uncontrolled nature. As more and more things go wrong, the hostility ratchets up between the five women, none of whom especially like each other with Alice being a prime target of their ire.
While the characterizations are a tad contrived in favor of the procedural dictum that everyone has a motive, the performers do a reasonable job selling their respective feelings of anger toward Alice or solidarity with one another. Alice’s superior Jill (Deborra-Lee Furness) suspects Alice to be sleeping with Daniel, the money launderer, and transparently conveys her mistrust of the whistleblower. Meanwhile, the passive aggression between Beth (Sisi Stringer) — a recovering addict who served jail time for stealing from and attacking her sister Bree (Lucy Ansell), also on the retreat — and Alice turns violent when the former spots the latter’s bullying and manipulation tactics. Lauren (Robin McLeavy), a shrinking violet, has a history with Alice, whose daughter has bullied Lauren’s at school for an extended period, but she bottles up her bitterness even when she’s being browbeaten by her.
“Force of Nature” teases out all of these conflicts quite well, even if the eventual blowups can drift towards heavy-handed territory, but they would be much worse off without Torv’s performance as the acerbic, unpleasant Alice, who is far from a “perfect victim.” Her nastiness towards the rest of the retreat members never feels exaggerated or melodramatic; instead, her cruelty and impatience towards them feel grounded in recognizable behavior, which makes it sting even more. She treats others brusquely out of a superiority complex, but also exhibits genuine fear and remorse whenever she suspects she’s gone too far. She spews invective in one scene but tries to assist in others. Truthfully, Alice resembles a familiarly callous, unkind coworker, the type that many people grit their teeth and put up with. Even the immense pressure she’s under from the feds, doesn’t automatically garner her audience sympathy considering that she’s only helping them to save herself from jail time.
Alas, the execution of all this intrigue leaves a lot to be desired. The film’s haphazard structure constantly undercuts its core mystery; sometimes the flashbacks are motivated by memory or interviews, and other times they just occur to move the story along. Though Bana gives a solid, all-but-supporting performance, he’s also saddled with some of the worst material, as his character clumsily balances his professional duties with his guilt about pushing Alice too far and, you guessed it, another traumatic event from his childhood.
You see, Falk’s mother also got lost in the same wetlands, forcing he and his fatherhood to embark on a rescue mission, so he knows what it’s like to be lost and waiting to be saved. While the adolescent guilt in “The Dry” made some sense for that story, here it’s entirely superfluous and manufactured. Worse, “Force of Nature” spends so much time flashing back to the young Falk’s rescue mission that it basically amounts to an irritating distraction.
While “Force of Nature” surpasses “The Dry” in a few key ways, it’s ultimately saddled with too much dead weight. The script incorporates a strange, oft-forgotten serial killer element that’s either a red herring or a second-draft leftover. It gestures towards critiquing the shortsightedness of law enforcement, local and federal, but it’s just as easily brushed aside whenever the procedural narrative takes precedence. Falk’s partner mostly exists to say, “This is the job!” and “We get results!” which is mostly a drag considering that the film does right by the rest of its predominantly female cast.
“Force of Nature” generates just enough mystery never to be boring, but not enough interest to elevate it above its modest trappings. It ultimately trips into hackneyed, sentimental territory that tries to tie together too many disparate threads into a satisfying bow, all while forcing Bana to become the film’s artificial focus. In the end, the story of a whistleblower gone missing, and the lives she’s affected, becomes another tale of one cop’s guilty conscience.
Grade: B-
IFC Films will release “Force of Nature: The Dry 2” in theaters and on VOD on Friday, May 10.
