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 get pleasure from writing destructive evaluations and I do not be ok with bashing movies. I attempt to stay optimistic and speak about what I like. However typically there is a film that’s simply so horrible, so depressing, such a waste of time and expertise, that it’s mandatory to write down about simply in order that the movie business can study from their errors. I doubt they’ll. They’ll proceed making dangerous movies like this one. However a minimum of I expressed my frustration and dissatisfaction in hopes that possibly 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 wholly Spanish manufacturing made primarily for Spanish audiences, the movie had its world premiere on the 2024 Sitges Movie Competition in Spain/Catalonia. It is dangerous. Like, actually dangerous. Luna is one in all these terrible movies that makes me wish to really cease anybody about to observe 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 includes 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 apprehensive 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 ok for streaming. The idea for Luna includes a bunch of Spanish astronauts on a “leisure” journey to the Moon. Some wealthy asshole has paid for this area 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 bit of the comet breaks off and smashes into Earth, reducing off all communication (and destroying all life on Earth?? They by no means handle this…). It is not a wholly unique 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 appears prefer it was shot in somebody’s storage (and never in some cool indie method, in a “how can a film look this dangerous” method). It is extraordinarily tacky and low-cost in each side, filled with exceptionally dangerous VFX. Not a single second of this film appears 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 area vacationer on this mission may have their very own spacesuit (which makes no logical sense) so every character has a special spacesuit they usually all look horrible. This is not any a part of this movie the place anybody will really really feel an pressure or fear or worry or concern for these folks. 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 aid 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 possibly I am going to 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 will not be that the movie is frustratingly dangerous, it is that I am unhappy I wasted 94 minutes of my very own time sitting via this cinematic junk. It represents all the things unsuitable with sci-fi filmmaking, from dangerous storytelling to annoying characters to horrible VFX and all the things else. This can be a mission everybody should refuse regardless of how thrilling it sounds. Simply exit and benefit from the Moon from right here…
Alex’s Sitges 2024 Score: 2 out of 10Observe Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
