Watched: 03/05/2026
Format: Hulu
Viewing: First
Director: Robert Connolly
A while back, for various reasons, Jamie and I both read the novel The Dry. It was a big seller in Australia, where it was written and takes place. And made its way here where I think it's done well.
I asked for some downtime before I watched the inevitable movie adaptation so I could try to see it with fresh eyes, and hadn't honestly, thought about the book much since I read it. It's fine! Go read it. But I think Jamie saw it starred Eric Bana and was happy to watch - and, anyhoo... here we are.
In the way of movies adapting popular books - the movie is largely a straight adaptation of the book with some extraneous bits knocked off and some efficiencies found in storytelling. But it really does capture the mood of the novel, and as Jamie and I agreed, it looks more or less exactly how I saw it in my mind's eye. Bleak, oppressive - a murder mystery in sun-scorched rural Australia.
The plot is complex - a member of essentially Australia's FBI, Bana, is called back to the town where he was born and raised, but hasn't been back to since high school. His best friend from back then has shot and killed his wife and son, leaving their baby daughter alive. He then took his own life.
He starts looking into it, wondering if that's what actually happened. Meanwhile, the death of a girl who he was very close with back in high school comes back to haunt him.
The movie (and book) basically treat the murder in the current timeline like a locked room mystery where everyone's a suspect. Which is a legitimate choice as the town is remote. And everyone kind of had opportunity, but motivation is oddly hard to come by. Meanwhile, he girl's death keeps coming up as he was a suspect, and many in the small town haven't moved on.
I think for readers of the book, this is a faithful adaptation that will make people generally happy. I am unsure if the movie doesn't feel like it's hitting the same not over and over - a mood that's relentless and plods along with a police procedural that doesn't quite give you enough to make you care about the lead (which, honestly, was a problem with the book, too).
SPOILERS
I felt particularly with the movie that they telegraphed the whodunnit, but took a while to get to motivation. The red herrings of the novel feel like winding options for our hero to look into, but when the killer is introduced, he's the only twitchy character and *feels* like a character rather than someone seamlessly folded into the movie.
And even more than in the book, the movie's choice of killers is kind of a disappointment? It's just a random murder for something unrelated to anything else. It's just a bad thing that happened. Which would be fine, but we spend so much time on suspects with potentially more interesting motivations (except for Jamie Sullivan, who they probably should have just cut from the movie) and who have a more personal stake in the history the movie loves showing us - it's just... odd?
The death of Ellie feels a bit motivation-free. The book sets it up much better, and here it's a statement of fact - here's what happened. But it feels like it comes out of left field in the final scene, and with the crevice barely established here, unlike the book, it's just a deus ex machina.
And, it kind of makes everything feel oddly low-stakes. I'm not quite sure in the movie what's Bana's motivation at any moment - things feel like they're happening because it was in the book, and when some of what's cut from the sprawling novel is removed, it loses some cohesion and drive.
I've only seen Bana in a handful of things, but he sure seems to specialize in staring at things and feeling things as an undercurrent that he cannot express. And that's fine. The rest of the cast is largely very good - I particularly liked Keir O'Donnell as the rookie-ish policeman in town.
Look, the movie is very much in the "it's fine" category. Reading the book, I could tell someone basically had it as a movie in their head, and that's fine. A lot of modern books work much like film. That people would be influenced by the beats and needs of popular cinema as it seeps into novels and Broadway shows is not a shock. We see what more movies than we read books or go to plays. That a popular book that feels vaguely like a cop procedural with drama on top is translated into same for the movies is not a surprise.
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