Movie · 2020 · Thriller, Adventure, Action, Science Fiction · 2h · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 2.1/10 (345.1K ratings)
It's the end of the world as we know it.
Overview
John Garrity, his estranged wife and their young son embark on a perilous journey to find sanctuary as a planet-killing comet hurtles toward Earth. Amid terrifying accounts of cities getting levelled, the Garritys experience the best and worst in humanity. As the countdown to the global apocalypse approaches zero, their incredible trek culminates in a desperate and last-minute flight to a possible safe haven.
Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, David Denman, Hope Davis, Roger Dale Floyd, Scott Glenn, Andrew Bachelor, Merrin Dungey, Holt McCallany, Gary Weeks, Tracey Bonner, Joshua Mikel, Cate Jones, Mike Gassaway, Anissa Matlock, Randall Archer, Scott Poythress, Claire Bronson, Madison Johnson, Brandon Quinn
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A solid, unusually grounded disaster thriller that favors family panic, logistics, and survival tension over nonstop spectacle. It’s familiar in structure, but the emotional stakes and lean direction make it more effective than its premise suggests.
Best for
disaster-movie fans
viewers who prefer grounded survival stories
people looking for tense, family-centered thrillers
fans of bleak but accessible mainstream genre films
Skip if
you want huge CGI destruction set pieces every few minutes
you’re tired of estranged-family reconciliation arcs
you prefer disaster films with a bigger sense of fun or camp
you want a more original apocalypse premise
Overview
Greenland is one of those disaster movies that knows exactly what it is and mostly does it well. Instead of chasing spectacle for its own sake, it keeps the focus on a family trying to move through chaos with limited time, limited resources, and a lot of bad luck. That restraint gives the film a sturdier emotional core than many bigger, flashier apocalypse movies.
Worth noting
The setup is familiar, but the execution is efficient and often tense. Ric Roman Waugh stages the collapse of normal life with a grim, practical energy, and Gerard Butler fits the material well as an ordinary man forced into increasingly impossible choices. The movie can lean on genre clichés, but it usually earns its beats through momentum and pressure rather than empty noise.
Bottom line
If you like disaster films that are more anxious than celebratory, this lands in a sweet spot. It’s not a reinvention of the genre, but it is a strong example of a smaller-scale mainstream catastrophe thriller that understands how to keep viewers locked in.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Griffin (2★) · 1516 likes
Nothing like a good ol’ disaster to save your marriage.
alor (3★) · 1266 likes
personally, i would simply give up and accept my fate
Nakul (3.5★) · 1082 likes
I have to admit, considering how low my expectations were for a Gerard Butler's end-of-the-world movie going in, GREENLAND definitely exceeded my expectations and boy was i surprised. Despite following some disaster movie cliches, this is a cut above most in this genre. A solid, well-directed & gripping movie, that manages to wring out a lot of tension and exhilarating bleakness from a very familiar premise. It's really grounded & subdued, focused more on characters rather than CGI spectacle, basically the antithesis… more I have to admit, considering how low my expectations were for a Gerard Butler's end-of-the-world movie going in, GREENLAND definitely exceeded my expectations and boy was i surprised. Despite following some disaster movie cliches, this is a cut above most in this genre. A solid, well-directed & gripping movie, that manages to wring out a lot of tension and exhilarating bleakness from a very familiar premise. It's really grounded & subdued, focused more on characters rather than CGI spectacle, basically the antithesis… more
Amanda the Jedi (3★) · 614 likes
I thought I was watching Geostorm and it took over an hour for me to realize that it was the OTHER Gerard Butler doomsday movie
Chris Evangelista (3.5★) · 549 likes
This is a million times better than it has any right to be.