In the Shadow of the Moon Review: plays smart tricks with time…

A cop becomes obsessed with a logic-defying serial killer in an extremely silly yet undeniably entertaining genre-switching film.

It’s a film so odd that it’s impossible to finish watching without exhibiting some sort of extreme, reaction and emotion. You could be confused, annoyed, even shocked as you sit down to watch this film, and I imagine director Jim Mickle would empathize with hi audience, too.

The first scene is set in 2024, a brief tease of a future rife with anarchy, smashed office windows looking down on to a street filled with fiery chaos.

We’re then hauled back to 1988 for the investigation. The film starts with a particularly grisly piece of business. One by one, an assortment of Philadelphians with no obvious connections from all walks of life, a bus driver, a classical pianist, the guy grilling up a cheesesteak at a greasy spoon and each victim suddenly bleeding out during their workdays after being assaulted and injected with a mysterious agent. with no perpetrator to be seen.

Ewww!

With ambitions to become a detective, officer Thomas Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook) inserts himself into the investigation, taking charge of the hunt from his brother-in-law Detective, Holt (Michael C. Hall) and soon launched on the trail of a young female killer who evades capture with ease of a ninja.

Moving forward, the film makes full use of its time-jumping structure, jumping through genres much as the narrative jumps through time. Especially when against all laws of science, the murderer is back on a killing spree nine years later. And then nine years after that. And nine years after that, too. A recurring nightmare that drives Locke ever deeper to the brink of madness

It’s a cop movie, with the cocky young Officer Locke (Boyd Holbrook) growing increasingly obsessed with what seems like an unsolvable case. It’s a serial-killer movie, although it never again approaches the bloodletting (which is a shame), of that opening sequence. It’s a family drama. Most surprising of all, it’s a time-travel movie, as well as its utter indefinability, wildly racing ahead at full speed, switching from detective thriller to science fiction to social parable without stopping to take a breath.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Directed by Jim Mickle, the filmmaker behind indie horror gems like Stake Land and We Are What We Are and crime thrillers like Cold in July and the wonderful Sundance TV series Hap and Leonard, “In the Shadow of the Moon” can’t quite confine its many moods within a single tone. The core, cat-and-mouse relationship, between Locke and the killer (Cleopatra Coleman), never really reaches the emotional depths for which it strives. And the storytelling that rolls over the finer details in the film’s final act is a bit cut and paste. In the end, Mickle’s ambition falls prey to some aggressive scripting and as if designed, maybe, to ensure you totally get the movie even if you were, let’s say, for example, just half-watching.

That said, even with its faults, In the Shadow of the Moon is a thrilling genre exercise that showcases Micke’s talents while pointing to what should be a bright future in big-budget filmmaking. And for a Saturday night rump through the Netflix catalog, you could easily get entwined in the premise of the movie.

So sit back and be enthralled.

3.5/5 STARS