In space, not many people can hear you scream. In fact, traveling in a manned spacecraft is probably a bit like working on a soundproof movie set — which is plainly where Europa Report was shot.
Tricked up with split screens and digital-video glitchery, this low-budget sci-fi saga emphasizes the claustrophobia and monotony of a long journey beyond Earth’s gravity. But it also borrows gambits from horror movies, withholding information and eliminating characters one by one.
Thus, while Europa Report recalls such small-ensemble stuck-in-space flicks as Moon and Sunshine, it’s basically The Blair Witch Project relocated to the vicinity of Jupiter. Something terrible has happened, and the endeavor’s backers (whose spokesperson is played by Embeth Davidtz) must reconstruct the unfortunate events.
A/V specialists assemble the available surveillance footage into a plausible narrative that reveals the fates of William (Daniel Wu), the mission’s commander, and the five crew members. This is where, as usual, the logic of the found-footage genre breaks down.
Rather than making a documentary from the surviving video — most of it necessarily shot from a fixed-position perspective, rather than with the now-traditional shaky cam — the editors shape it into a thriller. The chronology is jumbled, the account offers more foreshadowing than explication, and the big scientific discovery is hidden as long as possible. But you can guess the breakthrough won’t be good news for William and his multinational team.