A Philadelphia police officer struggles with a lifelong obsession to track down a mysterious serial killer whose crimes defy explanation.
The world premiere of Netflix’s soon-to-be “In the Shadow of the Moon” kicked off at Fantastic Fest this year. Stars Boyd Holbrook, Michale C. Hall, and Cleopatra Coleman attended alongside director Jim Mickle. This sci-fi crime thriller stands out for its classic cop story. The sci-fi operates on a fringe level so it’s truly a detective story.
Boyd Halbrook plays Officer Locke. One night, several strangers die in the middle of their work, brains literally scrambled. While investigating, Locke and his partner Maddux (playing the buddy copy dynamic perfectly with Bokeem Woodbine) stumble onto the perpetrator: a young African American woman. During their altercation, Locke kicks her out in front of a moving train. End of story. Flash forward nine years later and the exact same murders happen again on the same day (the night Locke’s wife dies giving birth). The hunt for this killer kicks off an obsession with Locke as he tries to decipher how this young woman survived the train.
Boyd Halbrook carries the film on his back as he bends from good cop to obsessive detective to paranoid fugitive. Bokeem Woodbine nails his routine and the two together are my favorite aspect of this entire film. Their banter lifts the harrowing imagery of scrambled brains. Mix in Michael C. Hall playing Halbrook’s bother-in-law detective and it’s something special. Hall’s turn as a snarky detective to stiff company man works directly in his favor. Everyone lifted this movie up in their performance. It truly sings in the first thirty minutes as Locke and Maddux try to solve the murders one step ahead of Michael C. Hall.
The Sci-fi part’s where it gets kinda wonky for me. Time travel is a hard concept to fictionalize. Too many plot holes and hastily constructed laws. I never quite seem to wrap my head around it. Maybe that speaks to my feeble brain but I’ve given up trying to understand the Moebius strip that is time travel. Movies that center on time travel just don’t work for me (“Primer,” “Avengers: Endgame”) but this film only uses it as a device and in that sense, I’m much more forgiving. In typical time travel movies, it’s actually a closed loop. The time travel of this movie plays much more like “12 Monkeys” than anything else.
The cinematography stands out far enough, but mostly to service the story. I couldn’t tell you what I remember about the score of the film or its unique visuals. Mostly I invested in Holbrook’s performance. The harrowing emotional core of the movie holds up specifically because he’s able to sell his character’s transformation.
Ironically, I’d recommend this for any fan of R-rated movies. It’s a middle-budget movie we rarely get these days and Netflix makes them. I appreciate what they’re doing and the director explicitly said so. He never weighed in on the streaming wars but he did confess that this kind of movie would never get made in Hollywood today. So, it’s a good time to be alive and on Netflix. Movies like this will easily fill up one evening and entertain you. I don’t doubt many people will connect with this as it’s a deep illustration of the power of obsession.
Available to stream globally on Netflix Friday, September 27th
