The Dry (2021)
Directed by Robert Connolly
No — The Dry is not woke, scoring 3 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Robert Connolly’s latest offering, The Dry, presents a narrative that is as arid as the Australian landscape it depicts.
Consciousness Markers
Female characters (Gretchen, Ellie, Karen) are present and given interiority, but the film makes no feminist argument and treats them within a conventional crime-thriller framework.
The drought is a pervasive atmospheric and thematic backdrop, but it functions as mood and metaphor for buried secrets rather than as a climate-change message or environmental crusade.
The cast is overwhelmingly white Anglo-Australian, with no evident effort toward diverse or representative casting. Characters exist as written in the source novel without any representational commentary.
There are no LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes anywhere in the film.
The film engages no racial themes or commentary; the small-town Australian setting is racially homogeneous and the narrative is indifferent to questions of race.
A subplot involves school embezzlement and gambling debt, but this is a crime mechanism, not a critique of capitalism or wealth inequality.
No body-positivity themes or messaging of any kind.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are present.
The film is a straightforward mystery with no revisionist or reframing historical agenda.
A slow-burn genre thriller that prioritizes atmosphere and plot over moral instruction; it never pauses to lecture the audience.
Why it received this score
Robert Connolly’s latest offering, The Dry, presents a narrative that is as arid as the Australian landscape it depicts. We find ourselves immersed in a mystery rooted in the small-town malaise of Kiewarra, where the unrelenting drought serves less as an environmental allegory and more as a potent atmospheric device for buried secrets. The film is a competent thriller, yet its approach to social consciousness remains remarkably conservative. The cast, which is overwhelmingly homogenous, occupies the space of a genre piece rather than a cultural commentary. There is little attempt to expand the narrative’s perspective beyond the existing social framework, and the progression of character arcs, while internally consistent, never suggests a deeper social reckoning. This is cinema that prioritizes plot mechanics over progressive sensibilities.
Even the few instances of progressive sensibility present are handled within the constraints of a conventional crime drama. The depiction of female characters, while allowing for their interiority, fails to transcend the expectations of a standard mystery structure. Similarly, the inclusion of the drought as a central motif functions as a metaphor for civic decay, which is perhaps the closest the film comes to a social critique, though it never moves toward a more explicit environmental crusade. The core of the film is a meticulously constructed investigation, which, while absorbing, avoids the kind of overt cultural unpacking that dominates modern cinema. The film is not seeking to instruct us on any particular moral or systemic failing.
It is a well-acted, atmospheric piece of storytelling. The pacing is slow, deliberate, and perfectly suited to the dusty setting. We are presented with a tightly wound plot and a central mystery that demands our attention. However, its lack of specific cultural focus means it remains safely within the bounds of traditional genre cinema. It offers a narrative that is satisfying on its own terms, a solid piece of Australian fiction, but it does not engage with the broader, contemporary dialogues regarding representation or systemic critique. It is a respectable, if comfortably traditional, piece of work.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.
Questions about The Dry
Is The Dry woke?
No — The Dry is not woke, scoring 3 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Dry have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Climate Crusade at 5.
How does The Dry compare to other 2021 movies?
It ranks #229 of the 242 films from 2021 we've scored; their average is 23. The wokest is The Forever Purge (83).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.