Set a found footage horror movie anywhere you please — Nazi Germany, the Vatican, Northern Canada or, in the case of Europa Report, one of Jupiter’s moons, and the end result is likely the same: an unsatisfied audience. The genre has long worn out its welcome and while dozens of horror film visionaries produce exciting, cutting-edge work, others toil at trying to resuscitate the success of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity series.
Europa Report is about the first attempt to send humans into deep space — a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter which scientists (in real life) believe might have ice. If the moon has ice it has water, which means it could possibly have life. A private company decides to send six of the world’s best astronauts on a two-year mission to Europa for scientific research. However, approximately six months into the mission the spaceship loses contact with earth. The film is therefore made up of footage of the crew on board which was recovered later since (surprise!) circumstances involving their landing on Europa ensure that the voyage is doomed for some — and maybe all — of the crew.
You’ll notice I didn’t provide the names of the six astronauts in the above paragraph. That’s because as characters they’re mostly interchangeable besides the specific jobs they have on the ship — the only one who shows any sort of unique personality is James Corrigan (Sharlto Copley), so you can probably guess when he gets killed off. What I think horror films essentially lost since the slasher genre became mostly self-parody in the early 1990s is the emotional attachment audiences should have with the characters. I didn’t want Laurie to get killed by Michael Myers in the original Halloween because the whole film built her up as an interesting character, which made me want to see her escape the killer. If the only reason I’m supposed to feel sympathy for Corrigan is because he shows the camera a photograph of his daughter at home, well, call me heartless but you’ll have to do better. Watching undeveloped characters get killed because of accidents is like watching an action hero kill random henchmen, and the reaction isn’t much different.
Thankfully, while the characters might be dull screenwriter Philip Gelatt doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence by also making them stupid, one of the trademarks of the found footage genre. Being that they are astronauts and world-class engineers and scientists I’m glad they didn’t act like the moron victims in most found footage films (for the most part, anyway). However, the one thing that didn’t make sense to me was the mission itself — why go through the expense of sending six people to Europa to collect samples of ice if rover robots can do that? On the other hand, these smart characters spend most of the time speaking in scientific jargon, which lost me after a while.
However, like many found footage movies we watch the characters react to scary circumstances rather than seeing what’s scary ourselves. Europa Report does build to an effective, 2001-like climax which is by far the best part of the film. But getting to those last ten or so minutes is a chore. Speaking of 2001: A Space Odyssey, it’s sad that the film’s computer generated effects are less real-looking than the forty-five year old effects in 2001 — much of the exterior shots look like they’re from a 1990s CD-ROM game like Wing Commander. It’s good then that most of the film takes place in confines of the spaceship (which was actually shot in Brooklyn), because the physical space looks much better than the “digital” space.
Europa Report took the found footage horror genre into less-explored territory by setting it in space, but I don’t think director Sebastián Cordero succeeded in getting the most out of this potential. Again, it’s certainly better than most of the other found footage films I’ve seen, but it’s not as thrilling or scary as you’d hope.
RATING: A fairly bland found footage sci-fi horror film that ought to be smarter and scarier (4/10).
Europa Report will be released on iTunes/On Demand June 27 and in theaters August 2
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