Moonfall Review: Emmerich's Disaster Film Is Messy & Only Occasionally Fun
Roland Emmerich is no stranger to disaster movies, having directed well-known ones like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012. Similar to the latter, his latest directorial endeavor, Moonfall, involves a conspiracy theory, but the truth of what’s really going on in the film’s plot is actually a lot stranger. Co-written by Emmerich, Harald Kloser, and Spenser Cohen, Moonfall is part disaster movie and part hardcore sci-fi drama that is occasionally thrilling, but gets more ridiculous and messy the longer it goes on.
In 2011, Jocinda (Halle Berry) and Brian (Patrick Wilson) are NASA astronauts whose space mission goes awry after a strange swarm attacks them and destroys their tech. Thereafter, Brian is blamed for the failed mission and the death of a fellow astronaut. He’s fired from NASA and, because no one believes what he saw in space, spends the next decade disgraced and struggling. Ten years later, NASA scientists discover the moon has been knocked out of its orbit somehow — a discovery conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) has known about, but has struggled to get people to listen to him. As the moon starts closing in on Earth, destroying and flooding entire cities, Jocinda, Brian, and K.C. go on a mission to defeat the space swarm and save the world from annihilation.
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Moonfall does have moments of sheer entertainment, with thrilling escapes, and spectacular visual elements that make the catastrophe look and feel both dreadful and exciting. The mysterious space elements of the film add to the idea that humans may not know as much about the vastness and history of space as they believe. That said, the
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