Review of Europa Report (2013) by Matthew S — 01 Aug 2015

Europa Report is a startlingly effective minimalist and cautionary hard-sci fi story told with a more filmic spin on the found footage genre: There's no disorientating and lazy hand-held action camera because the crew, which we follow on their two year journey to Europa, do so in a ship fully equipped with dozens of wide angle cameras.

The clean if not sterile footage of their traumatic journey is intercut with just the right amount of talking head interview footage, culminating in a final discovery which is frightening and haunting despite its nature being unnecessarily detailed through a moment of ever-so slightly unimaginative CGI.

Whilst the central plot is comparable to that of "Alien" - a crew embarks on a mission to investigate an unchartered planet (or moon), discovers something dangerous which threatens their lives and are faced with a threat they never could have imagined - there are also hints of Stanislav Lem's 'Solaris', whilst the machinery of the story provides a welcome and intriguing essay on mankind's limitations as far space travel and exploration are concerned.

A fine cast enact a screenplay grounded in realism, and for once the crew appear reasonably psychologically sound (see "Prometheus", where at least one crew member appears to be mad from the outset and in reality would never pass muster for deployment on a multi-billion dollar space mission).