Near the beginning of the doomed journey into space that is The Moon, a slog of a science fiction film from writer-director Kim Yong-hwa, it is remarked in a hallway conversation back on Earth at an operations station that “the chance of back-to-back massive failures is very low.” Of course, this makes it immediately clear that something is about to go catastrophically wrong and might as well be accompanied by a wink to the audience.
The story places us in the not-too-distant future of December 2029. After a prior disaster, South Korea has now launched a manned mission to the moon that we are told is valuable to them and part of a new space race. When a solar flare disrupts communications, this is merely the beginning of a series of escalating crises that will befall the mission. This leads to casualties and strands the now lone astronaut Sun-woo all on his own.
When many of the visual effects then look more like a bad video game than they do a real depiction of the perils of space travel, this further takes you out of the experience. Some of the best science fiction films, even those with a lower budget, can get around this by focusing on the little details and working within more confined spaces. The experience of watching something like Prospect or Moon, while far more reserved, feel truly alive because of how invested you get in them.
'The Moon' Increasingly Falls Apart There is a numbing repetitiveness to the experience that will always pull it back from being more genuinely thrilling to just keep tumbling aimlessly. With each catastrophe, it falls into a pattern where it half-heartedly makes it seem like all hope is lost as everyone looks on worriedly from below. There is plenty of shouting in these moments so that we can’t miss how serious it is, but it oddly feels empty despite how much is going on.