The dumpster fire that has been 2020 just might be redeemed by a civilization-ending catastrophe – especially if it is directed by George Clooney. The Midnight Sky is not just another apocalyptic disaster movie. It is a cinematic storytelling experience that fills the small screen with sweeping landscapes from the arctic to the outer limits of space.

Clooney is stepping out once again as director and star and he has picked a doozy of a story. He manages to jam more than 75,000 words of story into a two-hour film without sacrificing the pace and depth of the tale. With cinematography reminiscent of films like The Revenant and Apollo 13 it is as visually appealing to watch as any big budget Hollywood flick.

Adapted from Lily Brooks-Dalton’s book Good Morning, Midnight, in The Midnight Sky Clooney portrays scientist Augustine Lofthouse, who given his life to his scientific pursuit of discovering inhabitable planets. The story opens after an undefined catastrophe, which has made the earth uninhabitable, leaves Lofthouse as the last man alive at a remote, Arctic research station. Because of his terminal illness, he opted not to evacuate the station with the rest of the researchers and chose, instead, to live out his final days monitoring the situation from his research hub.

During his solitary watch at the research station, Lofthouse makes two startling discoveries. The first, a child was left behind during the evacuation. The second, an exploratory space shuttle has decided to return to earth, not realizing it can no longer sustain human life. Lofthouse decides to pack up his young charge to make the treacherous journey to a secondary communication station to warn the shuttle against returning to earth. This decision triggers a chain reaction of events that put Lofthouse, the young girl and the space crew in peril.

Clooney makes some beautiful artistic choices throughout the film but it’s not enough to cover for the deficits of a plot that should have been much more character driven than it was. There were several moments when the characters almost made us believe they were invested in the story, like Kyle Chandler’s replaying the memories of his wife and children while longing for home, but those moments were too few and often times lacked the depth needed to hold the viewer’s attention . While the plot on its own is interesting, the play was missing heart – and we noticed.

All that being said, give The Midnight Sky a watch for its beautiful cinematography and style … and because its been a few years since we’ve seen Mr. Clooney onscreen and we’ve missed him.