Okay. I… I just finished The Midnight Sky on Netflix and my brain feels like it’s been put through a snowblower and then gently reassembled with frozen fingers. It’s almost 1:30 AM and my apartment is dead silent except for the hum of the fridge and I swear I can still hear the wind from that movie. That constant, howling, empty wind.
I started it on a whim, just scrolling, you know how it is. The Netflix algorithm was like "Hey, you like sad space movies and grumpy George Clooney?" and I was like, "You know me so well, algorithm." So I hit play, burritoed myself in my favorite blanket on the couch, and prepared for… well, I wasn't sure what. But it wasn't that.
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My cat, Gus, was curled up on my feet for the first half. He was a perfect, warm little anchor. Then the scene with the ice fissure. I physically recoiled. Like, full-body flinch. I pulled my feet up so fast Gus shot me a look of pure betrayal and stalked off to the bedroom. Sorry, buddy. But when they were crossing that chasm, the rope snapping, the sheer drop into nothingness… my stomach just dropped. I was holding my breath. I could feel the cold radiating from the TV screen, seeping into my living room. I had to pause it right after that scene. Just to get up, walk around, make sure my floor was still solid. That’s the kind of movie this is. It gets under your skin, into your bones.
And George Clooney. Man. He’s not the charming, smooth-talking guy we’re used to. He’s broken. Frail. Every cough feels like it’s rattling my own ribs. He’s just trying to do one last good thing before the lights go out. It’s so quiet. So much of it is just him, alone, in this vast, empty landscape of a research base in the Arctic. It reminded me of this one time I got snowed in at my grandparents' cabin for three days when I was a kid. The silence was so loud it was deafening. The world just… stopped. I remember pressing my ear to the window, trying to hear something, anything, beyond the muffled sound of my own breathing. It was peaceful and terrifying at the same time. That’s the whole vibe of this movie.
But then you have the spaceship. The Aether. It’s all sleek and clean and full of hope, these astronauts who don’t know. They have no idea. The dramatic irony is just brutal. It’s like watching a horror movie where the killer is hiding in the closet and you’re screaming at the screen, "DON'T GO IN THERE!" but they’re just happily chatting about their plans for Jupiter. And the kid. The little girl, Iris. She doesn’t speak. And it works. It makes her this universal symbol of… I don’t know. The future? Innocence? A reason to keep going?
There’s this one shot that’s just burned into my eyelids now. Augustine and the little girl are looking at this massive, wall-sized screen showing the star chart. And he’s pointing out constellations, trying to connect with her. The camera is behind them, so you just see these two small figures dwarfed by this infinite map of the universe. It’s just so… lonely. And beautiful. And it made me want to call my dad. I didn't, of course. It's 1 AM. But I wanted to.
Honestly, I thought I was loving it. Completely captivated. But now that I’m typing this out… was the ending a little too… neat? A little too "movie"? I don't want to spoil it, but the choice that gets made at the very end… I thought it was this profound, heart-wrenching sacrifice. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it was just… convenient? Or maybe I’m just cynical and tired and my brain can’t handle that much unadulterated sentimentality right now. I don’t know. I feel guilty even thinking it. It felt so powerful in the moment. My heart was pounding. But now? The aftertaste is a little… sweet? And I don’t know if I wanted sweet. I wanted bitter. I wanted the cold.
The whole experience was so… at home. I paused it to pee. I checked my phone during a slower part (sorry, George). I got up and made a cup of tea that went cold because I forgot to drink it during the climax. It’s such a weird way to watch something so epic and vast. This story about the end of the world, witnessed from my couch, with a half-eaten bag of chips next to me. It’s a strange dichotomy. Should I have seen this in a theater? Maybe. The scale of it, the space shots, the sound design… it would have been incredible. But honestly? Wrapped in my blanket, with the lights off, feeling the isolation seep into my own quiet apartment… maybe this was the perfect way to see it. It made the loneliness of the characters feel more real, closer.
So yeah. My brain is mush. A beautiful, sad, frozen mush. I keep picturing that final shot of Earth from space. So fragile. Just hanging there. And I’m sitting here on this big blue marble, typing on my laptop, and it all feels so big and so small at the same time. I need to go to sleep. But I kind of don’t want to, because I know I’m going to dream about endless snow and silent spaceships.
8/10 - solid
-alex