Not All Explorers Return

The last time I was at Alex', I had a choice between watching Oldboy and Europa Report, and went with the first one. That was a terrible, terrible mistake, but one I'd apparently blocked from my mind so completely, I'd forgotten about the other movie entirely, until this week.

Europa Report is about a manned mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa, where all communication was lost about 7 months into the journey, because of a radiation spike. This also caused the loss of one of the crew, though the specifics on that aren't revealed until about halfway through. With no way to contact Earth, they continue with the mission, reaching the icy moon, and setting about searching for life in the subterranean ocean. They naturally find more than they bargained for, and life expectancy drops rapidly.

It's sci-fi crossed with one of those "found footage" horror films, I guess, since we see most of the scenes through various cameras stationed inside or outside the spacecraft, or inside a spacesuit helmet. Taking that approach to filming put me in mind of films like Apollo 18, or the Paranormal Activity movies, so I spent a lot of time straining to try and pick up the infinitesimal signs of movement I expected were there. But that's not really how the movie plays it, it isn't going for the jump scare. To the extent there's a creeping sense of dread, it feels like a natural extension of the fact they are a small group of people, in an environment that's extremely hostile to them, and there's no help available to them. 

There is at least one occasion where a character makes the sort of stupid decision you see in horror films. The one where you as the audience know it's a bad idea the moment they make it. In this case, it's at least partially acceptable because the character is a scientist, and they think they can explore a new phenomenon. It plays off the character's curiosity, rather than them doing the dumbest thing imaginable because the plot demands it, but I still wound up shaking my head and muttering, "You dumbass."  It seemed like pressing one's luck too far. But I guess if you've already flown 600 million miles through space to get to this place, you're pretty committed.

Which was one thing that kept coming up in the film, was how accepting all these characters seemed of death, as long as they could expand the boundaries of human knowledge. It surprised me a little, but martyrdom is not a condition I find terribly healthy (I have a little of it, too, but it's limited to suffering in service of getting something done, not actually dying. So more masochistic, perhaps). But again, if someone is willing to go on a mission like this, they'd have to be pretty serious about it. I doubt they'd be offered the job otherwise, and if they were, it's hard to imagine they'd accept it without recognizing the probability something could go wrong.

I'm not sure the film does enough to distinguish the characters to the point I care much about them. A couple of them - Andrei, maybe Rosa - get a bit of development, but I know when a couple of characters died, I shrugged. Although by that point the writing was on the wall. Getting worked up over their deaths was futile.