Movies
[Fantastic Fest Review] Netflix’s ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’ Tries to Be Too Many Things at Once
Editor’s Note: It is nearly impossible to discuss In the Shadow of the Moon without discussing its basic premise. This may constitute as a spoiler for some readers so proceed ahead at your own risk.
Director Jim Mickle has made a name for himself directing low-budget horror fare like Stake Land and 2013’s remake of We Are What We Are, but he hasn’t made a film since 2014’s crime thriller Cold in July due to his commitments to SundanceTV’s Hap & Leonard. He returns to us this year via Netflix’s silly science fiction time-traveling murder mystery thriller In the Shadow of the Moon. If that sounds like a mouthful, it’s because it is. The film tries to be so many things at once that it winds up buckling under its own weight, but that doesn’t mean that the journey isn’t somewhat enjoyable. For its first half, it’s actually an intriguing little thriller, despite the shortcomings of its cast.
Following a prologue that shows the repercussions of a civil war in 2024, In the Shadow of the Moon travels back to 1988 as Officers Locke (Boyd Holbrook) and Maddox (Bokeem Woodbine) are called to the scene of a gruesome crime. Several more corpses pop up around the city and all of them suffer from the same cause of death: bleeding out from every orifice before their brains liquefy. Working with his brother-in-law (and fellow officer) Holt (Michael C. Hall, Dexter), the men eventually track down the murderer (Cleopatra Coleman, TV’s The Last Man on Earth) before she falls in front of an incoming subway.
Flash-forward nine years to 1997 and the murders start happening again. Locke and Maddox are thrust into a game of cat and mouse with the killer, who seems to be the exact same person that died nine years earlier.
To say anything more would spoil most of In the Shadow of the Moon‘s surprises, but rest assured that the above plot summary only covers about 30 of the film’s 115 minutes. And what a long 115 minutes it is. Spanning across several decades, the film’s sluggish pacing means that it often feels as long as the time frame it takes place during. Jeff Grace’s bombastic score attempts to add suspense to the proceedings, but it’s no match for a weak script, which was co-written by Gregory Weidman and Geoffrey Tock (both of whom wrote for TV’s Zoo and Limitless).
In the Shadow of the Moon sees Mickle working with a bigger budget than what he’s normally used to and he puts it to good use. The film looks great, seeing Mickle use cinematographer David Lanzenberg to the best of his abilities. The death sequences (of which there are quite a few) are appropriately nasty, especially those in the opening sequence.
As with many a time travel movie, the plot does not hold up under scrutiny. The reasoning behind the murders is convoluted enough, but one particular third act revelation retroactively creates a gaping plot hole in the film’s first act. But hey, why bother to think so much about it when the film didn’t do the same? Not only does this revelation not work from a logical standpoint, but it misses the mark emotionally too. Locke’s self-destructive behavior is so off-putting to the point that he doesn’t inspire empathy or sympathy. Because of this, the climactic emotional beats ring false.
The performances are hit and miss. Rachel Keller (TV’s Legion) does what she can with a throwaway role as Locke’s wife, but Coleman does some strong work as the mysterious villain. She isn’t given much to work with since the film keeps her too mysterious, but she exudes the appropriate amount of menace needed to keep viewers invested in the plot. Unfortunately, Neither Hall nor Holbrook are doing their best work, with Hall dropping in and out of a Southern(?) accent and Holbrook doing everything he can to suck the charisma out of every scene he is in. Locke is already a poorly-written character, but Holbrook is unable to inject him with any sort of personality.
In the Shadow of the Moon is far from a failure, but it is painfully mediocre. It features some excellent production design and has a great concept that is let down by a weak script. Mickle doesn’t bungle the execution, but the screenplay and his lead actors do him a disservice. This seems to be par for the course with Netflix’s film library, which pales in comparison to their television offerings.
In the Shadow of the Moon had its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest and will be released by Netflix on September 27.
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
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