Film Review - Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 is the follow up to 2021’s The Dry and both Writer/Director Robert Connolly and Eric Bana as Aaron Falk return in their roles, this story however takes place in Victoria’s High Country as 5 women (Deborah Lee-Furness, Anna Torv, Robin McLeavy, Sisi Stringer and Lucy Ansell) head up into the high country for a corporate retreat but only 4 return and Alice (Torv) is the one missing and Falk was using her for a high stakes AFP operation so the race is on to find her before a powerful storm system sweeps through the area.

I was very keen for this movie as I really enjoyed the Dry in early 2021 and have rewatched it a couple of times since then, it had a great mystery, a much welcome great role for Bana who had really been struggling since his break out role as Chopper Reed and great use of the drought stricken area it took place in but sadly this movie was the first to fall victim to the dual writers and actors strikes last year and its original August 23rd release date was delayed to February 8th but my main cinema was able to take part in some early screenings over the Australia Day long weekend and I pounced.

And happily most happily this movie has been well worth the wait and if you liked the Dry then you will not be disappointed and in 2 of the 3 fronts that film succeeded well in this one does too:

- The first of those is the location, whereas the first film had this dry desert frontier town feel to it where showers were a luxury and you felt the browns of the drought stricken land and the reds of the nearby fires and clear skied sunsets, this one is full of flowing waterfalls and riverbeds and dense green grassland where it can be easy to get lost and one small mistake can see you going down a mountain to almost certain death and the film makes great use of the high country landscape to full effect and it really shows on a big cinema screen.

- And the second of these is the casting, Bana is as good as ever second time around as Falk but here he has a co-detective to bounce off of in Jacqueline McKenzie and the two play off each other pretty well even though there were times I wished Bana was alone trying to solve the case, Lee-Furness (who previously made a movie set in the High Country called Cool Change with Jon Blake and Lisa Armitage in 1986) is very good here while Richard Roxburgh is good as well in a small role.

Also good are the other returning members of the corporate retreat McLeavy, Stringer and Ansell while Anna Torv who has rapidly emerged as one of my favourite actresses working today delivers her usual very good work as Alice, I can’t wait to see her again in the 3rd Season of the Newsreader later this year.

But there is one area where this movie isn’t as good as the Dry and that is in its central mystery, in the Dry it was easy to follow whereas here it’s firstly not as interesting and secondly at times it feels a little too twisty turny for its own good but that said this movie does NOT In any way fall into the same trap that both Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile or Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel Glass Onion fell into where they were just inferior films full stop when compared to their predecessors.

And so that was Force of Nature: The Dry 2 and this is a sequel that is as good as the first film and I will be keen to see this again when it starts its national run on February 8th, 3 weeks before Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters Will finally come out and what a glorious day that will be, 4 out of 5.