“One of the chief joys of the time travel subgenre is strictly mechanical: it’s all about the ways nonlinear characters let creators deconstruct a standard narrative, bringing different segments of the story together in unexpected ways.” This is the way The Verge starts the review of this movie, In the Shadow of the Moon, overall praising it as innovative and well constructed. I must say I only half agree with them.
The very first image displays a caption ‘Philadelphia, 2024’. Not enough for a Blade Runner and/or cyberpunk-style setting, but still future enough (five years) to enter in a sort of near-near-SF landscape. The following scene, gutted buildings engulfed into flames with background music full of suspense made me think of a movie that falls into the rather popular category of SF crime thrillers. In other words, I was well-tuned and ready for it.
What came next seemed to confirm my assumption in a gory way -multiple deaths (likely murders) seemingly all connected. Fantastic! And then… the BS factor dramatically increased.
As it turned out, In the Shadow of the Moon was actually frustrating under many aspects: one, there wasn’t any future-connected content (time travel apart). So, why bothering with the 2024 setting at the beginning? Two, crime-wise (and I said it as somebody who grew up on it and kept binge-watching ever since), it was unbelievable under many, many points. Oh, and the stereotypical dumb detective, guess who is he? Nothing less than Micheal C. Hall. Ergo, Dexter Morgan. And as if it were not enough, there is, at a certain moment even a tune from True Detective S1. Sigh. In a good movie, details like these would have represented a nice bonus. Here? Mm.
Albeit all its shortcomings, I save more than a few things in this movie, and I think it’s still worth watching it; but you need to keep watching because I promise the first twenty minutes will pull you out of it. There are some nice, creepy moments, which could have been far more enjoyable if the underlying speculative assumptions of the movie had been made clearer since the beginning, not just with a date in the future and cryptic dystopian images. Yes, there are some good ideas here (which I don’t elaborate about to avoid spoilers) -and a great ending, full of emotions. No, those ideas have not been used as well as they could have been, and there are logical nodes remained unsolved.
The real problem for me in a certainly promising flick was the overall credibility (or lack of). In too many moments I had to fight against (or for) the suspension of disbelief, which has to be maintained especially in crime movies. Here, speculative fiction trappings apart, the crime element was still the most prevalent, and that’s where an otherwise inventive movies came short.
In the Shadow of the Moon is now on Netflix, and here’s the trailer:
I watched this last night and did enjoy it, although you’re right, there were some things they could’ve done better! 🙂
Yes. It is fine, but it could have been awesome 🙂
I saw it a few days ago, and in the end I could not help thinking about all the missed opportunity to turn this into a great, gripping story. Sadly, it fell somewhat short of the mark… (((SIGH)))
I perfectly agree. So much potential… 🙁