Europa Report (2013) Review

"Europa Report" has its positives but it has several flaws which bring it down to a predictable and mediocre sci-fi flick.

This is about 6 astronauts on a mission to the moon "Europa" to look for life. As the mission continues on, it proves to be increasingly difficult as the crew members are put through difficult situations.

There are aspects to this that I like. Firstly, I usually dislike found-footage. I feel that it's lazy but this film handles it so well that I didn't even notice it. Also, this movie was running on a tight budget which is understandable why this film did use found-footage so I can forgive that.

Also, this movie is actually kind of realistic in terms of scientific accuracy. Scientists theorize that "Europa" is covered in ice with a center made of water. So the science presented in this movie is actually fairly accurate. It's always nice to see a science fiction film display accuracy and I liked it.

But the acting is really hit or miss. It's not completely terrible but it's not anything special which starts to bring me into its flaws.

My first issue with the film is that the movie has no character development. It isn't always necessary to have character development but this movie didn't even give personality or mood to any of the characters. They felt so much like empty shells that I could care less whether which ones lived and which ones died.

There was another thing I didn't like about the characters. At first, I didn't know how to word it but another reviewer hit the nail on the head when he said that the crew members were pretty much deficient. One crew member after another kept on screwing up adding extra drama to the movie. Some old science fiction movies may not have gotten their science right but the crews were more professional. The drama came from other sources.

I've seen some people say that they loved the cgi in this movie but I didn't like it at all. The shots of "Europa" looked like they were from some low budget video-game. I could tell they were fake and they weren't very believable. They looked highly outdated for 2013.

I'm not going to spoil the ending but it's really thin and not enough is explained. The ending just makes people go "Huh?" and try to google up some theory. The movie ripped off a lot from "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Abyss" also. Also, this movie failed to keep my attention. I found myself checking my watch several times during it. The movie picked up near the end but the rest of it was very bland.

So in conclusion, this movie is just mediocre. It's not absolutely horrible like some sci-fi movies but it's very flawed. It's quite a shame too because this really could have been a truly amazing cult-classic but it's ultimately weighed down by numerous flaws.

EDIT: I originally gave this movie a 5/10 but I'm now going to drop it down to a 2/10. One of the positive points I listed for this movie is that it is fairly realistic in terms of scientific accuracy. Now that I think about it though, its accuracies really contain nothing new when it comes to sci-fi and space movies. Its accuracies are very minimal and there are plenty of other movies which have much more accuracies to them. Because of this, the movie becomes much less impressive. The only reason it doesn't get a 1/10 is because the found-footage effects were so good that I didn't notice it.

Final Verdict: 2/10 Terrible