There are good intentions behind the film and if the script, from Gregory Weidman and Geoffrey Tock, gets muddled, Mickle is a reliable hand behind the camera. They all have puncture wounds and a suspect soon surfaces, a young black woman in a blue hoodie (Cleopatra Coleman). Professional critics were more impressed with In the Shadow of the Moon than amateur reviewers were. I would understand annoyance, befuddlement, shock or incredulity and I imagine director Jim Mickle would empathise but as I scratched my head, I also found myself oddly charmed by its brazen nuttiness, a film aiming for the stars and, sometimes, almost succeeding. A cop becomes obsessed with a logic-defying serial killer in an extremely silly yet undeniably entertaining genre-switching film, Last modified on Thu 26 Sep 2019 06.02 BST. The plot is best explained with minimal detail and while the trailer is embedded here to watch, I’d recommend avoiding it entirely. An odd film like this needs a charismatic anchor in its lead role to keep it from losing its human connection and Boyd Holbrook just can’t muster the energy to do that. It’s laughably earnest and frustratingly coy at times, especially near the end, but also in its own eccentric way, sort of unique. Prahlad Srihari September 27, 2019 13:26:39 IST. In that sense, Shadow of the Moon ends up playing into some of the natural human tragedy of generational projects like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a … 2/5. In other words, it's a … Instead, they get lost in the dark. The Netflix-produced thriller In the Shadow of the Moon is the latest addition, and puts an interesting spin on the familiar idea of a killer traveling back through the decades to commit murder. Still, there's enough mystery to pull the plot through, and all the technical aspects of the made-for-Netlix film are top tier. Like the 'Apollo 13' movie, Howard brings an unerring sense of confidence and suspense to his work. One of the most common critiques of the many, many Netflix original movies that get spewed out on a weekly basis is an overwhelming flatness, each looking as cheaply, anonymously assembled as the last. With ambitions to become a detective, officer Thomas Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook) inserts himself into the investigation, soon launched on the trail of a young female killer who evades capture with ease. What saves it from complete disaster is Mickle’s technical skill—he washes the film in nice blues and grays with cinematographer David Lanzenberg, although even that feels like it could have been leaned into more. I say almost because there’s a great deal here that doesn’t work, an inevitable pitfall when trying to do so very much. Write a review. cast. A bus driver, concert pianist, and fry cook all die at the exact same time, their brains literally spilling out of their eyes, ears, and mouths. In the Shadow of the Moon (Review) In the Shadow of the Moon. It’s a strangely flat, unengaging performance that doesn't match the ambition of the overall piece. There’s a slicker, more coherent and ultimately more thematically audacious film to be made from the disparate elements that make up In the Shadow of the Moon but what we have is a lovable mess nonetheless. What this film lacks in visual excitement it makes up for in its topicality: the worry it seeks to wake us up to is … It’s almost as if they’ve met before. Sometimes a movie that is a bit of everything can end being not enough of anything. Brian Tallerico is the Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. In the Shadow of the Moon is a serial killer flick that spans decades and straddles genres, combining thriller with science fiction, police procedural, and time travel. Review: ‘In the Shadow of the Moon,’ ‘Sister Aimee’ and recycled horror Cleopatra Coleman in the movie “In the Shadow of the Moon.” (Sabrina Lantos / Netflix) Merging a procedural about an obsession with a single case like “Zodiac” with sci-fi elements is a clever idea for a B-movie but “In the Shadow of the Moon” isn’t fun enough to qualify as that. This was reviewed out of Fantastic Fest. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association. By the time I got to the ending, In the Shadow of the Moon felt like an underwhelming misfire, the type of film with solid potential that nevertheless became another … Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, The Ripple Effect: Daniel Kaluuya and Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. on Judas and the Black Messiah. Holbrook and Mickle take themselves way too seriously and force the final hour of the movie into gigantic exposition dumps. 'In the Shadow of the Moon' is a truly remarkable documentary, with the astronauts telling the story and superb NASA film from the moonshots bringing their words to life - back to life for those of us who watched it the first time. In the Shadow of the Moon somehow takes multiple genres and mashes them together to come up with a highly unique viewing experience that actually works. After what appears to be a violent end to a strange story, “In the Shadow of the Moon” jumps ahead to 1997, when it looks like a copycat is repeating the same crimes as nine years earlier. In the Shadow of the Moon comes up short in regard to the human angle. In the Shadow of the Moon owes a great debt to other dystopian stories, specifically Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, a far superior if somewhat more fanciful time-travel feature.