Moon DVD Review

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) works on the moon as an astronaut for Lunar Industries. He has nearly completed a three-year mission to harvest moon rocks which help to supply Earth’s main source energy, Helium-3. Videotaped messages are the only means of communication he has with civilization back on Earth, including his beloved wife, Tess (Dominique McElligott) and 3-year-old daughter, Eve (Kaya Scodelario), who he’s looking forward to reunite with shortly. Inside the moon station Sarang, he spends his time living and working there alone while just interacting with a computer called Gerty (voice of Kevin Spacey).

The mission goes smoothly until, one day, he crashes his lunar rover and, the next thing he knows, he’s back at the mining station recovering from the crash. Another Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell, again) shows up and may be a clone or, perhaps, they’re both clones. As the first Sam becomes more and more mentally and physically unstable, the line between truth and fiction gets increasingly blurred.

Screenwriter Nathan Parker does a great job of building tension very gradually by not giving too much information about Sam Bell all at once. Essentially, the film skips a first act that might have shown Sam interacting with his family on Earth and preparing for the lunar mission. Instead, it leaves that segment out and puts you right at end of Sam’s mission, so that makes the plot more mysterious and leaves more for your imagination, in turn, while staying clear of becoming too convoluted.

Not all of the questions get answered when the third act’s twists become revealed, though, but at least the twist works in hindsight without seeming too gimmicky and tacked-on. It’s also worth mentioning that there’s just the right amount of comic relief to counter the plot’s heaviness.

Sam Rockwell gives convincing performances here in multiple roles and has the charisma to carry the film pretty much on his own. The other character, besides, the computer Gerty, would be the setting on the moon itself. Director Duncan Jones, David Bowie’s son, includes a terrific musical score along with breathtaking long and medium shots of Sam in the lunar rover mining the moon’s surface.

Some of the visuals will remind you of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Concurrently, the set designs inside the lunar station adds to the atmosphere of claustrophobia as Sam remains stuck there in isolation with a possible clone. At a running of 97 minutes, Moon manages to be intriguing and suspenseful with awe-inspiring visuals and terrific, well-nuanced performances by Sam Rockwell in dual roles. Essentially, it avoids tedium while finding just the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them intellectually, which rarely happens in sci-fi movies nowadays.