Sitges 2024: Spanish Stuck-on-the-Moon Thriller ‘Luna’ is a Disaster
by Alex Billington October 12, 2024
Spain, we have now a downside. I do not take pleasure in writing adverse critiques and I do not be ok with bashing movies. I attempt to stay optimistic and discuss what I like. However generally there’s a film that is simply so horrible, so depressing, such a waste of time and expertise, that it is crucial to write down about simply in order that the movie trade can study from their errors. I doubt they’ll. They may proceed making unhealthy movies like this one. However no 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 Pageant in Spain/Catalonia. It is unhealthy. Like, actually unhealthy. Luna is one in every of these terrible movies that makes me need 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 options 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 someway they’re nonetheless allowed to make extra? Except for the film having that annoying streaming sheen, it is so low-cost and excruciating to take a seat by that I am shocked it isn’t being dumped on DVD. It isn’t even adequate for streaming. The idea for Luna includes a group of Spanish astronauts on a “recreational” journey to the Moon. Some wealthy asshole has paid for this house tourism voyage all so he can get a picture standing on the Moon whereas a comet passes by Earth within the background. Whereas they’re up there, a piece of the comet breaks off and smashes into Earth, reducing off all communication (and destroying all life on Earth?? They by no means deal with 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 appears to be like prefer it was shot in somebody’s storage (and never in some cool indie approach, in a “how can a movie look this bad” approach). It is extraordinarily tacky and low-cost in each side, filled with exceptionally unhealthy VFX. Not a single second of this film appears to be like acceptable. The comet hitting Earth is some 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 have been made by elementary college children utilizing some “My First CGI Modeler” software program leftover from the Nineteen 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 completely different 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 individuals. I needed it to stroll out after the primary quarter-hour, however I sat and suffered by 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 upset. My frustration is not that the movie is frustratingly unhealthy, it is that I am unhappy I wasted 94 minutes of my very own time sitting by this cinematic junk. It represents every part unsuitable with sci-fi filmmaking, from unhealthy storytelling to annoying characters to horrible VFX and every part else. This is 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
