We all have trauma, some of it small t trauma and some of it big T trauma. What we do about the trauma, big or small affects how we live and engage with the people in our lives. Instead of dealing with the trauma, which can be difficult, many people engage in activities like sex, drugs, music, shopping, or exercise to name a few, to numb the feelings that come up instead of dealing with the underlying issues.
Detective Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) uses his trauma to try to solve criminal mysteries. Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (dir. Robert Connolly) is a sequel to The Dry where Falk solved a murder in his rural home town while solving a 20+-year-old missing person case that was involved with why he was forced to leave the town in the first place.
The latest mystery that Falk is faced with is about a high-flying banker who has gone missing during a company leadership retreat under suspicious circumstances. Complicating this is that person Alice (Anna Torv) is an informant for Falk in a case to bring down the owners of the financial institution for money laundering and helping war crimes.
To further complicate matters, the area of forest where the leadership retreat is taking place in is where Falk’s mother was attacked when he was a young boy. Also, there is a serial murderer who was meant to live this some remote area of the forest that was never found.
Jill Bailey (Deborra-Lee Furness) is one of the owners of the company and leading the leadership retreat, she suspects her husband Daniel Bailey (Richard Roxburgh) is having an affair with Alice. Beth (Sisi Stringer) has a history of drug abuse and crime and is been given a second chance with this job, and her sister Bree (Lucy Ansell) hides some secrets about her sister’s crime. Finally, Lauren (Robin McLeavy) detests Alice for an incident between their daughters that has left her daughter emotionally hurt.
So motive aplenty with this group of women and many unresolved traumas that could manifest themselves while Falk is dealing with the emotions raised by being back in the forest where he lost his mother to potentially a serial killer.
On top of all of this, the local police headed by Sergeant King (Kenneth Radley) is more interested in finding out information on the serial killer to find the remaining dead bodies he couldn’t find years ago. This frustrates Falk to no end because he needs Alice to get the evidence to put away Daniel Bailey. Sergeant King’s trauma of disappointing all of those families with unresolved emotions by not being able to bury their loved ones is an understandable one.
This creates a lot of spinning plates for the film to explore and resolve. Similar to the first movie while cutting back to younger Falk’s life and how those actions and decisions are affecting the case in front of him.
The film sets up all of these threads to be pulled, however, the breadcrumbs aren’t given to the audience in a way that reveals the answers once you know what you are looking for. All the loose ends are explained using exposition we, the audience, didn’t know. This ultimately leaves the audience unfulfilled and unresolved, sort of like trauma.
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe
29th January 2024