Europa Report

I eagerly awaited this movie and it did not disappoint. There were a couple of moments that felt very typical of the genre but they proved small in comparison to the quality of the movie. It focused on the tragedies without allowing them to become the movie which is often not the case especially in Hollywood movies. I also enjoyed the theme that no one person was greater than the events round them, which for Hollywood would have been unthinkable. A big thank you to the team behind this. Oh and by the way this film is far superior to Gravity which is derivative of a Russian movie, even though my favourite, she can do no wrong actress stars in it.

Good movie sci fi

Not the typical set in space action blockbuster, sitcom, romcom, detective story, which Hollywood so often labels sci-fi. Here, the low budget and understated performance compliment the story, helping to keep it all near to believable. Nothing in Europa Report is entirely original and indeed, the film is sprinkled with acknowledgement to the classics. Alien, 2001, Darkstar and more recently Cloverfield, are all represented. None the less, the cast and crew have blended the familiar formulas to create something new.

It has it’s moments, and it looks pretty at times, but this is a very slight movie. Yes the space-ship looks very realistic and yes the surface of Europa is reasonably well done. But if you've seen the trailer then the movie holds few surprises and unfolds in a very predictable way… Not the worst way to spend an hour and 20 minutes, but far from the best…

This film masquerades as a documentary showing "found footage” from the many cameras covering a space mission. However, the film has trouble sticking to that premise and therefore keeps breaking the “4th wall”, ruining suspension of disbelief. This happens where the director presumably changed his mind and wanted this just to be a regular sic-fi horror. What we’re left with is an uneasy mash-up of the two. To start with, there is nowhere near the amount of narration and additional material you would get with such a documentary. From the midway point, there are long periods when we are only watching the found footage. Then, towards the end, we get the narrator again. No explanation is given as to how the footage was “found". I don’t want to spoil anything, but by the end of the film, you will be wondering the same. Any documentary on such a topic will normally start with an overview of the event, and then how the footage was recovered. Another problem is the jumping back and forth between timelines… a documentary would never do this… this is just the filmmaker trying to create dramatic tension, teasing us with the aftermath of an event, before then showing the lead-up. In fact, there is one jump backwards in the timeline that totally confused me, because I wasn’t expecting it… I obviously missed some vital visual cue. The music is completely over the top, even for a Discovery Channel documentary. Again, this is because the directory was using techniques more suitable for a regular horror movie (such as the music distorting and overwhelming the rest of the audio). The only other major problem I had was with the actress narrating the documentary part - her English accent was unconvincing enough to make the whole thing seem fake and staged. It’s all a great shame, because what the film does very well is create the sense of awe and wonder at the prospect of landing on an “alien” world. The special effects are also subtle but extremely effective. I have no idea how much this movie cost to make, but pretty much everything you see is completely believable. It’s also quite tense in places, although this then started to become predictable. So I’m left wondering whether the documentary/found footage approach was only chosen in order to hide the limited special effects budget, or whether the director was encouraged to spice the film up a bit in post production.

This film captured my imagination. I wish there were a sequel!

Yes, so the last couple of minutes could have been a little less literal, and/or cheesy but the rest…?!?…. This film is reminding all of us who love science fiction that we do so because we love story telling and imagination, not just a mindless sequence of explosions, and that special effects cannot take you very far at all by themselves. And that the reason why films like Blade Runner, Alien and Space Odyssey 2001 were mind blowing was not the effects but the story. And - this is seriously controversial now - that to be human, even today, in the age of 3 and 4 and 5D, means to be able to be moved to convulsions by a voice alone. As others have said here, Gravity had extraordinary visuals, but got really dull and trite very quickly, and was ultimately a huge disappointment. Europa Report is gripping and moving and life affirming well beyond its story, because it reminds us that we each have within us the capacity to transcend and take flight into dream_or_ nightmare_worlds without needing prompts worth billions of dollars, just some clever and sensitive fellow humans adept at spinning a tale. Cannot wait for more like this.

Don't be put off by the found-footage format. This is an intelligent, wonderfully paced sci-fi thriller...its not a popcorn movie full of baysplosions. I was captivated from start to finish, and that doesn't happen often. Not for people with 5-second attention spans though.

Personally, I didn't find this particularly entertaining. The 'found footage' style works quite well and I liked the actors very much, but even though I didn't see any reviews beforehand, the story is ultimately predictable -- you'll probably know it within 10 minutes of the film starting, with just a couple of small surprises, neither of which has any bearing on the final outcome. Creatively done, but it if was a far more standard beginning to end film about a mission to explore Europa, then I'm sure I'd have enjoyed it more.

What a great realistically paced sci-fi movie!