Europa Report

Here is some context about Europa for you: it is a tiny, as in tiny, ice ball located 390 million miles away from Earth. It has essentially no atmosphere and a temperature of -260 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees colder than Mars gets at night). It is one of the most dangerous places in space with a radiation level 1,800 times that of earth on its surface. As has been pointed out before, sending humans to this moon without extreme protection is suicide.

I think this film could have captured the sheer terror of deep space, the deadly environment of Europa, and the possible deadliness of whatever creatures it may, or may not, contain if it ditched the found footage motif entirely. I never liked the found footage format it just never seemed as frightening and in your face scary as experiencing it "live". It's like watching a youtube video of the scary thing instead of being in the scary thing.

Another drawback of the found footage is we lose a wider view of the environment, a big problem here because you want the audience to see Europa and the massive nearby Jupiter. I think I saw more of both in the movie's poster than I did in the actual film. The film loses a few stars for these reasons.

On the other hand, the movie earns some kudos for fairly good acting, reasonably realistic portrayal of astronauts, some stressful and frightening moments, and a generally intriguing look at what could be lurking out there in space. If only it wasn't found footage.

I liked this movie. It was a good sci-fi flick, but based in a believable near-future world. The voyage is captured by stationary cameras throughout the ship and a story is patched together from them. The acting was very good. There admittedly wasn't much in the way of character development, but I didn't notice it. The whole film I was hoping the story would move forward faster and faster to the end, to find out what, if anything, was discovered, and the fate of the crew.

Mostly what I liked about it was that it wasn't over-the-top storytelling, nor was it over-the-top with special effects. It used them only to tell the story that needed to be told and weren't overused. One reviewer chastised the special effects as being poor, but I disagree. They were believable. Bad is the crap they make for the Science Fiction Channel.

This movie may not appeal to everyone precisely because it's not over-the-top. It was simple, with building tension throughout the film and a good ending. There weren't monsters and aliens everywhere, there was a distinct Hitchcocian feel to it.

Very good; well worth watching.

"Europa Report" is relatively authentic in its details about the large, icy moon of Jupiter called Europa, But it is not perfect, and it will strike many viewers as, at first, slow and claustrophobic. After all, as one of the astronauts observes, the space inside the ship is extremely limited even while the space outside is vast.

That said, I recommend "Europa Report" for being sufficiently adventurous while not making the intelligent viewer cringe over obviously fake science. In fact, it is a horror movie made more horrifying by the plausibility that, just as there are dangers in nature here on earth, there might be equal or worse horrors lurking on the many moons and planets we have yet to explore.

There are some tropes here that are similar to those of other space movies, but many that are different, too. No, crew members do not become infected with an alien bug that makes them kill each other. Yes, they argue, but it is mostly about taking chances versus safety. The crew cooperates, and they take care of each other in admirable ways--if ultimately futile ones.

There are however, several don't-go-down-those-stairs moments. ("Actually walking on the surface of Europa was always a question mark," says one astronaut as the crew is about to vote on whether one of the scientist-astronauts should go outside.)

The scene that confused me most was the one about the attempted repair of the communications system; I thought they were all in the lander on Europa's surface, but apparently they left two astronauts on the orbiter high above the surface. Anyway, that is the first genuinely scary scene. There are subsequently some more scary scenes including the ending.

For those who do not know. Europa is Jupiter's fourth largest moon (Jupiter has well over 80 moons and moonlets), and it is one of three big Jovian moons that have liquids on their surfaces. In fact, Europa has an all-ice surface with nothing much other than a salt-water ocean beneath that ice. While the surface of this planet-sized moon is absolute zero degrees (utterly frozen), its innermost core is molten hot so that the salty ocean between the hot core and cold surface is relatively warm--warm enough that some of the creatures in earth's oceans would probably be able to live in Europa's ocean. So, does Europa have life of its own? That is what the astronauts in "Europa Report" want to find out.

There are some scientific quibbles: Although the movie acknowledges that radiation is a huge problem, it seems rather cavalier about it. (Europa is pretty close to Jupiter and is hit by 5.40 Sv of radiation a day; as I understand it, that quickly translates into deadly exposure.)

Another problem is that the movie assumes that the surface of Europa is rough but relatively flat; yet recent data suggests that the icy surface is made up of huge, closely interspersed ice-spikes; making landing a ship there similar to throwing a tennis ball at the sole of a boot cleated with sharp metal spikes.

Many advocates of a mission to Europa insist that we should send robots, not people. However, the filmmakers should be forgiven because danger to robots would not be as exciting as danger to humans. "Europa Report" gives us a crew of diverse humans who turn out to be relatable (if somewhat generic), who are nevertheless admirable in their determination and bravery.

As a science/space enthusiast, I found this movie to be really interesting and enjoyed it. I think all the viewers who like these types of plots would enjoy it, but the directorial approach may be annoying to some viewers. The shaky statics videos and limited angels of camera view might not be too popular. There wasn't any character development or focus on the characters, it was pretty straight forward. The documentary style used was reasonable. The best thing about this movie was it was a low budget indie movie which did a wonderful job. A lot could have been better. Humans traveling to space and land on Europa, a moon in Jupiter, that itself is a reason to watch it, Do not expect a typical Hollywood style movie. However this movie takes a very realistic approach to present the complex space mission depicting the psychological and the physical strains on the astronauts.

I loved the movie, mostly because it dealt with topics that I am very interested in. Space exploration is just.. Awesome. I think this movie was aimed in a very great direction and was executed well; however, in areas it seemed to show that it was lacking power of a bigger budget. At other times that is not the case at all, As there are many great visual scenes, and a fantastic conclusion.

I think the acting was very unexpectedly good, not a single person was a bit unbelievable or annoying or anything like that.

The story is great, and is very much intelligently woven with modern theories and discoveries in science.

There is one thing I will say in a somewhat negative vein. There are certain kinds of scenes that I wish they did way more of, like outside on the planet. Not that they don't do it enough, but you can never have enough of that.

I highly recommend this to any sci fi/ space fanatics

It is one of my favorite movies in the last couple years.

Hope you enjoy it.