Plot Summary
Force of Nature: The Dry 2, a new thriller based on the novel by Jane Harper, is a sequel to the 2020 film The Dry which starred Eric Bana as federal police detective Aaron Falk.
Bana returns as Aaron in The Dry 2 where he is called upon to investigate the case of a missing woman, Alice Russell (Anna Torv), who disappeared somewhere in the Giralang Ranges while on a corporate retreat.
It turns out that Aaron already knows Alice as she was helping him uncover a money laundering scheme at her firm, Bailey Tennants. Not only that but Aaron also has a personal connection to the area in which Alice went missing. Years before, his mother disappeared from the region when he was with her during a family expedition.
In this ending explained article for Force of Nature: The Dry 2, we ask the question: What happened to Alice Russell?
How does Aaron know Alice?
As well as investigating Alice’s disappearance, Aaron is also working with his colleague, Carmen, on a money laundering case.
His focus of attention is Daniel Bailey, the head of a company named Bailey Tennants. Aaron suspects Daniel is helping his clients evade taxes. To uncover his misdoings, he called on Alice to help bring him down.
Alice is a senior financial advisor for Bailey Tennants. Aaron blackmailed her into becoming a whistleblower after learning of a huge donation she made to her daughter Margot’s school. This money wasn’t a charitable donation. It was given to protect Margot from expulsion.
Aaron gave Alice a pen drive and asked her to gather evidence against Daniel Bailey and his dodgy clients. But before she could give Aaron the information, she disappeared on a company retreat that had been organised by Daniel and his wife Jill.
What happens on the company retreat?
On the retreat are Alice, Jill, Lauren, Bethany, and Bree. Lauren is the mother of a girl named Rebecca, who was bullied by Alice’s daughter Margot. It was this bullying that almost caused Margot’s expulsion.
Bethany and Bree are sisters. We learn about Bethany’s criminal past as the story goes on.
The group get lost on the hike, largely thanks to Alice who seems to be leading them astray. They don’t have their phones with them as there is a no-device rule on the hike. They don’t have a map either, as they lost this in a river.
Eventually, they find an abandoned cabin and decide to stay there for the night. Alice doesn’t want to stay here as she is keen to get back to the hotel.
Nearby is a gravesite of a dog. Alice thinks this might be the dog of serial killer Martin Kovak, who, years before, used his animal to lure his unsuspecting victims.
(It’s possible that Aaron’s mother was killed by Kovak. During their family trip, he heard a dog barking and then discovered his injured mother. She later died from her injuries).
Could Kovac be responsible for Alice’s disappearance too? No, because he died years before. There’s a more straightforward explanation for Alice’s going missing, which Aaron discovers during his investigation.
What happened to Alice?
As Aaron investigates, he discovers the following.
Alice wasn’t well-liked by the group. In some ways, she was as much a bully as her daughter. As such, it’s possible that any one of them could have had something to do with her disappearance.
When Alice went missing on the retreat, Bree went to look for her. Eventually, she found her dead body.
Initially, Bree thought her sister Beth might have had something to do with Alice’s death. This is because she found Beth’s torch near the body. As Beth had a criminal past, this gave her another reason to assume her sister’s involvement. To protect Beth, Bree moved Alice’s body to another location.
So, who killed Alice? It turns out Lauren was responsible for her death. She and Alice had a confrontation, in which Alice accused Lauren of being as weak as her daughter. In a fit of rage, Lauren pushed Alice and caused her to fall on a rock.
Alice died after hitting her head on the rock. There’s a chance she could have been saved with medical intervention. But Lauren chose to return to the cabin without revealing Alice’s position to the other women.
The next day, when Lauren returned to the location where she had left Alice, she saw that Alice was no longer there. She assumed Alice had made her way back to the hotel. But as we now know, Bree had moved Alice’s dead body.
How does the film end?
Lauren, who is feeling guilty about Alice’s death, goes to the top of a waterfall. She’s planning to kill herself but Aaron arrives to talk to her. After discovering what she did to Alice, he tries to guide her away from the edge. But in the process, Lauren falls into the water below.
Aaron jumps into the water and manages to save her. This act of bravery may be healing for him, as he had previously been unable to save his mother.
A short while later, Beth admits to Aaron that Daniel thought she was the whistleblower. She also reveals that Alice had been trying to protect her.
Beth found the pen drive that Alice had hidden near one of their campfires. At the end of the film, she hands it to Aaron, thus giving him the information he needs to incriminate Daniel Bailey.
Read More: Force of Nature: The Dry 2 Review