Sitges 2024: Spanish Caught-on-the-Moon Thriller ‘Luna’ is a Catastrophe
by Alex Billington
October 12, 2024
Spain, we now have an issue. I do not take pleasure in writing unfavorable opinions and I do not be ok with bashing movies. I attempt to stay optimistic and discuss what I really like. However typically there is a film that’s simply so horrible, so depressing, such a waste of time and expertise, that it’s obligatory to put in writing about simply in order that the movie business can be taught from their errors. I doubt they are going to. They are going to proceed making unhealthy movies like this one. However not less than I expressed my frustration and dissatisfaction in hopes that perhaps they’d spend cash on higher initiatives subsequent time round. Luna (which interprets to easily Moon) is a Spanish science fiction thriller movie directed by filmmaker Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas. As a result of it is a completely Spanish manufacturing made primarily for Spanish audiences, the movie had its world premiere on the 2024 Sitges Movie Competition in Spain/Catalonia. It is unhealthy. Like, actually unhealthy. Luna is one in all these terrible movies that makes me need to really cease anybody about to look at it and implore they don’t waste any time or cash on it. Alert, alert – keep away from this movie in any respect prices.
Luna encompasses a script written by Jorge Navarro de Lemus (of Ego, Lobo, El Molino) and it is directed by Alfonso Cortés-Cavanillas (additionally of Ego, Lobo, El Molino). I am a bit fearful that this already their fourth movie collectively and by some means they’re nonetheless allowed to make extra? Apart from the film having that annoying streaming sheen, it is so low-cost and excruciating to sit down via that I am shocked it isn’t being dumped on DVD. It isn’t even adequate for streaming. The idea for Luna entails a gaggle of Spanish astronauts on a “leisure” journey to the Moon. Some wealthy asshole has paid for this house tourism voyage all so he can get a photograph standing on the Moon whereas a comet passes by Earth within the background. Whereas they’re up there, a chunk of the comet breaks off and smashes into Earth, slicing off all communication (and destroying all life on Earth?? They by no means tackle this…). It is not a completely authentic thought – The Cloverfield Paradox and 3022 and different indie sci-fi movies have comparable plots about Earth going darkish. Luna is not doing something new both, with terrible dialogue the place each single line makes you roll your eyes. Each character is unbearable. All of them simply whine and complain. None of them have any thought what to do. It is all so silly to watching this story.
Worst of all, Luna seems prefer it was shot in somebody’s storage (and never in some cool indie means, in a “how can a film look this unhealthy” means). It is extraordinarily tacky and low-cost in each facet, full of exceptionally unhealthy VFX. Not a single second of this film seems acceptable. The comet hitting Earth is a few inventory VFX shot that simply occurs off within the distance. A scene involving comet particles crashing down on the Moon close to them options bland VFX that had been made by elementary faculty youngsters utilizing some “My First CGI Modeler” software program leftover from the Nineties. The filmmakers inexplicably determined that each house vacationer on this mission may have their very own spacesuit (which makes no logical sense) so every character has a distinct spacesuit and so they all look horrible. This is not any a part of this movie the place anybody will really really feel an stress or fear or worry or concern for these individuals. I needed it to stroll out after the primary quarter-hour, however I sat and suffered via the remainder of it (solely 94 minutes) simply so I can report again that nothing occurs on the finish both – the script is so underwritten there is not even a conclusion both. The best reduction is when the credit lastly begin rolling.
As a sci-fi geek, I all the time take the chance and attempt to watch any new (indie) sci-fi movies with the hopes that perhaps I will uncover one thing distinctive and thrilling. That is not the case right here. There’s not a single redeeming high quality. I could not be extra disenchanted. My frustration just isn’t that the movie is frustratingly unhealthy, it is that I am unhappy I wasted 94 minutes of my very own time sitting via this cinematic junk. It represents all the pieces fallacious with sci-fi filmmaking, from unhealthy storytelling to annoying characters to horrible VFX and all the pieces else. This can be a mission everybody should refuse irrespective of how thrilling it sounds. Simply exit and benefit from the Moon from right here…
Alex’s Sitges 2024 Score: 2 out of 10
Observe Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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