Interesting and suspenseful, a very good sci-fi thriller

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2010)

Recap: Sam Bell is an astronaut working for Lunar harvesting helium on the moon for Earth's fusion reactors. His three year contract is coming to an end, and he is looking forward to going home and reuniting with his wife and young kid. But he is having some peculiar visions, imagining people that isn't there. One of those lead to him having an accident getting trapped in a lunar rover. When he wakes up in the infirmary the station AI informs him he has been in an accident, but he can remember no details. When he goes outside the station he discovers the demolished rover, and to his surprise, a trapped astronaut inside it. Is he still imagining people, or, if the trapped astronaut is real, who is he?
Comments: A very well written and inventive thriller using a possible aspect of a near future technology of cloning. It is an eerie suspense that slowly builds up with the uncertainties the characters feel, well acted and scripted so that I viewing also had my doubts of who was what or who.
It is also interesting that a movie can be made so complex with only three characters, and two of them being the same person. The third is Gerty, the suspicious station AI, voiced by Kevin Spacey. The threat and suspense connected to it is not really external, not initially at least, but stems from Sam Bell's uncertainty of his own identity and sanity.
One could extrapolate and have a serious discussion about cloning after having viewed this movie, but it also works well as pure entertainment. Duncan Jones is a new director that has also written the original story, having made a well made movie with good attention to detail. It will be interesting to see what Jones can make in the future.
8/10