98 min | PG-13 | January 9, 2026 | STX Entertainment
Big plot holes, small investment, performances that are unearned and characters barely worth knowing. But a few good shots and interesting plot devices make this “something.”
Gerard Butler returns as the world’s luckiest structural engineer, and Morena Baccarin continues to deserve better material than this. The first Greenland worked because it had a simple premise: family tries to survive apocalypse. Migration takes that goodwill and buries it under plot holes you could fly a rescue helicopter through.
The distances in this movie make no sense. Characters traverse what should be hundreds of miles of frozen wasteland like they’re running errands. The timeline is equally suspect. Days pass or don’t based entirely on what the script needs next. Geography is treated as a suggestion.
Secondary characters exist solely to die. You can spot them immediately. They get just enough screen time to establish they’re decent people, then the movie kills them off to raise stakes it never earns. If they’d been wearing red shirts it would have been more honest.
Baccarin, who was magnetic as Inara Serra and brought genuine warmth to a literal space prostitute, is reduced to worried looks and occasional crying. She’s a talented actress trapped in a role that asks nothing of her except to be in peril.
The ending is where Migration truly loses the plot. The movie spends its runtime telling you everything is hopeless. Resources are gone. Civilization collapsed. Trust no one. Then it pivots to sunshine and optimism so forced you’d think the studio mandated reshoots. The happy ending doesn’t feel earned because the movie spent its runtime proving it shouldn’t exist.
There are worse ways to spend 95 minutes. Butler commits to the bit. Some action sequences land. But Migration is a sequel that forgot what made the original work: simplicity and stakes that felt real. This one has neither.