‘Lumina’ Review: A Soap Opera That Thinks It’s a Space Opera
There’s ambition exceeding your grasp, and then there’s “Lumina.” The brainchild of writer-director-producer Gino McKoy, who also wrote several songs appearing on the soundtrack, this alien-abduction drama could have used more time on the mothership.
The film itself can be likened to a low-flying spacecraft assembled from mismatched parts belonging to other, more fully realized sci-fi flicks. Where “Close Encounters of the Third King” hovers gracefully, “Lumina” crash-lands. Its ambitions are lofty, but they’re also undermined at nearly every turn by chintzy visual effects that prove more distracting than immersive and uniformly wooden performances. It wants to be a space opera but is closer to a soap opera, albeit one that would air on Syfy rather than CBS.
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The first few scenes alternate between spacey sci-fi and earthbound relationship drama, initially in a way that leaves you guessing as to how these narrative strands are connected and whether they even belong in the same movie. They do, but it takes so long for them to intertwine that you might lose interest by the time it happens. At the heart of it all are Alex (Rupert Lazarus) and Tatiana (Eleanor Williams), a couple whose romantic idyll is upended first by the arrival of his former flame Delilah (Andrea Tivadar) and then by lights in the sky that beam Tatiana up and leave no trace of her behind. He’s understandably distraught, but “Lumina” gives us little reason to be similarly invested in her fate.
That’s in spite of some truly schmaltzy musical cues that work hard to communicate what the actors can’t, but here as elsewhere, “Lumina” overplays its hand. At the other end of the spectrum is a recurring musical motif that sounds suspiciously similar to the main theme from “Sicario” — another instance of the film’s attempts at emotional captivation having the opposite effect.
It is unintentionally funny at times, however, as when, a few minutes after the disappearance, enough time has passed for Alex to be sporting a depression beard so comically bushy it would make Jeremiah Johnson blush. After receiving little help from the authorities, he decides to look for her himself — an ostensibly reasonable idea that Patricia and Delilah react to as though it’s the worst plan they’ve ever heard, which in the conspiracy-laden world of “Lumina,” it may well be. He eventually comes to believe that she’s been taken to a deep underground military base, which one might also refer to by its acronym: DUMB.
Special mention is owed to Eric Roberts, chewing scenery in the single-scene role of a sagacious cowboy claiming to be privy to top-secret information that They don’t want the rest of us to know about. He’s responsible for the crucial second-act exposition dump, which in this case doesn’t actually clarify much. One gets the impression that the actor was on set for a single day and is responsible for an outsize portion of the budget, which might explain why the special effects look the way they do.
The film makes its intentions explicit by ending with an intertitle about alien-abduction statistics, making it the rare message movie about UFOs, extraterrestrials and what happens to those who dare to seek out answers. And while the truth may be out there, it certainly isn’t in “Lumina.”
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