Moonfall: movie review

Moonfall, 2022 (PG-13 on IMDb, 16+ on Amazon Prime) 

We love natural disasters with half-decent happy endings, 5/10 ratings and all.

“A mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling on a collision course toward Earth.” So reads IMDb, with a rating of 5.1/10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 35%. A bust, or a safe break from life? 

Braced for some eye-rolling, I dove into this story of conspiracy theorist, KC (John Bradley), ignored by government officials as he claims the moon is changing orbit. 

Characters saying obvious things? Check. Cheesy alien conspiracy? Check. Little to no emotional connection? Check. 

Even the meta-premise sounds familiar: Earth is endangered and a retired white male astronaut must return to space to salvage hope for humanity (Interstellar, Ad Astra).  

But unexpectedly, the quite decent filmography and special effects softened me. Many bigger-budget films don’t get their camera work right. And just like Interstellar’s realistic modelling of astronomical phenomena had my eyes shining, Moonfall’s visuals proved my favourite part: The moon spirals in toward the Earth, ripping up the Earth’s surface and dragging tidal waves across the landscape. 

And then Moonfall got fun. Two former astronauts, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) must find, rebuild, and launch a retired space shuttle under increasingly dangerous weather and gravity conditions. Certainly a novel natural disaster idea, but let’s not lose sight of its legacy: the volcano movies of ’97, Volcano and Dante’s Peak; the asteroid movies of ’98, Armageddon and Deep Impact; the climate change movies like The Day After Tomorrow, etc, etc, etc. We love natural disasters with half-decent happy endings, 5/10 ratings and all.

However, Moonfall had more echoes to Interstellar than just the space premise, to the point of attempting a mirror: leaving children behind and solving a space-based mystery with external intelligence potentially behind it. But Moonfall’s answer to “who’s doing this” is far less profound than Interstellar. *Sigh.* 

Score one for the megastructuralist conspiracy theorists. I’m sure someone’s blogging about how this movie reveals the scientific truth that the government is hiding.  

A safe break from life nonetheless? Yup. As long as you don’t demand emotional fulfillment.  

Amazon Prime’s rating refers to the violence, substance abuse, and foul language, but I wasn’t sufficiently shocked to rate it 16+. I do appreciate the caution for the disquieting, out-of-control disaster, and emotional intensity with strong language—though I would probably use exactly that language in the face of such a disaster.

All that said, and with no sexual content, PG-13 seems just fine.  

Review written by: Jazmine Lawrence, Captain (Retired, RCAF), BSc Honours Physics, MA (Theology) student, future sci-fi author