What’s It About
When the sudden appearance of lights from the sky causes his girlfriend to disappear, Alex and his friends embark on a quest to find her. Their journey soon leads them to a deep underground military base where they encounter government agents and an alien menace that threatens their lives.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Lumina is marketed as a horror-thriller but comes off more like a blend of a road trip, a government conspiracy, and an unintentionally comical space adventure. It tracks the journey of four not-so-bright best friends on a mission to rescue their friend after aliens abduct her. If you dare to take on this adventure, Lumina will be a viewing experience you can’t forget, no matter how hard you try. The film starts with a five-minute prologue on an alien planet that isn’t revisited until the end. We are whisked off to Los Angeles, where our main character, Patricia, resides with her friend Alex and his girlfriend, Tatiana. Following a party attended by Alex’s former flame, Delilah, Tatiana is abducted by an otherworldly light, leaving Alex and his pals on a quest to uncover a government conspiracy. The abduction scene is the initial hint that Lumina may be so absurd that it’s amusing. A sequence involving a space-suited individual stumbling upon an overturned buggy segues into a dazzling LA house party, leaving us pondering how these sequences tie together. A massive explosion in which liquids freeze in mid-air, along with a jogger who never reappears, adds to the bewildering and disorienting nature of the film. Lumina is akin to a chaotic, nightmarish hallucination involving aliens, lost love, and a guy who keeps getting nosebleeds and sneezes out what might be an extraterrestrial-implanted microchip. The movie’s heart revolves around four friends and former lovers, Alex, Patricia, Delilah, and George, who embark on a dangerous rescue mission after Tatiana’s abduction. The ambiguous abduction scene led me to believe that Tatiana had been reduced to a smoldering lump of coal where she had stood. Nonetheless, the film is reminiscent of falling asleep while scrolling through Instagram and waking up in some unexplored corner of the internet. You’re bewildered, but you keep watching to see the next outrageous sequence. You also wonder if anything will prevent Tatiana from using her cell phone. As they unearth more about Tatiana’s enigmatic past, Alex is haunted by visions of her captivity. The team realizes that the government has been concealing sinister alien activity and may be collaborating with the aliens themselves. Laden with deplorable visual effects and poorly timed pop culture references, Lumina is a messy and bewildering venture that will leave you speechless before you promptly switch it off and seek out something less taxing to watch. Despite some genuinely impactful moments of body horror, such as individuals housed in massive test tubes reduced to their spinal cords, the chills more or less end there. One unexplained shot of an older woman in a wheelchair turning around and laughing ominously underscores the film’s inability to frighten its audience despite its R-rating. The actual aliens, who look like characters from an old Halo video game, are given too much screen time. The film also steers clear of sensuality, mercifully avoiding an inevitable romantic involvement among the team members. The pacing is peculiar, with prolonged periods where virtually nothing transpires. Several scenes are missing, especially noticeable during the denouement. Cuts abruptly begin and end, making it challenging to discern what is happening on screen. Dialogue is heavily dubbed, and characters enter and exit with little explanation. Eric Roberts gives his all as Thom, a conspiracy theorist about aliens. He goes berserk, starts waving a shovel, and is almost forgotten. The best B-movies tie up their plots by the end, but Lumina ends with a confusing WTF, followed by a fictional scene of Tatiana and Alex locking lips to a cheer-inducing love song. Ultimately, it’s unclear whether Lumina is anti-aliens, anti-government, or anti-cinematic. If you go into this expecting genuine thrills and a captivating alien abduction narrative, you’ll likely leave the theater bewildered, disheartened, and wishing you had spent the last two hours doing anything else.
OUR RATING – AN EXPERIMENTAL 2