Directed By Gino McKoy

Starring – Rupert Lazarus, Sidney Nicole Rogers, Andrea Tivadar

The Plot – Follows Alex (Lazarus), whose relationship with his dream girl Tatiana (Eleanor Williams) ends in a flash of blinding light. Completely traumatized by the situation, Alex desperately sets off with his friends and conspiracy theorists to discover what really happened to his girlfriend. While traveling through the desert, Alex and his friends are faced with the unexpected, pushing the group to fight for their lives.

Rated R for some adult language, and violent content

Lumina Exclusive Trailer (2024) (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

You can label ‘Lumina’ a lot of things, but unambitious simply isn’t one of them, especially with so much uniqueness originality that went into its concept towards making this unpredictable. While the execution does leave more to be desired, combining respective genres and plugging tonal gaps is something that I give McKoy a lot of credit for, especially in that the film certainly could’ve went one way, but constantly defies expectations by deviating on its creative path, and with a cinematic presentation inside of its more than opportunistic and rumored 4 million dollar budget, that at least loses itself in bountifully beautiful scenery that corresponds with the ambition smoothly. In addition, I truly hated most of the performances in this film, but I can say that Ken Lawson’s George is a welcome breath of fresh air that at least humbles the film with some semblance of comedic personality to scenes that he showcases in. While the material does him little favors in the consistency and effectiveness of his appeal, Lawson’s unabashed commitment to vulnerability and quick-thinking quips made him the one character who I legitimately cared about, with no shortage of character to his characterization that effortlessly made him stand out.

NEGATIVES

Once a year, a film so audaciously awful will materialize without any idea of how or why it was made, and ‘Lumina’ seems to be this year’s ‘Knights of the Zodiac’, as a result of its bombastically bad execution that truly made this the most insufferable watch that I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing in 2024. It begins with the script, with what is possibly the longest opening act in cinema history. While Tatiana’s disappearance happens at around the fifteen minute mark, a feat that’s a bit long-winded in itself, the complete extent of the set-up of this group of friends reaching the film’s primary location takes an entire 75 minutes of the 105 minute run time, completely crushing the second act, or lack thereof, while compressing the climax in ways that feel rushed and sloppily developed with abruptness. On top of it, the script is constantly trying to draw a tie to real life disappearances, which it irresponsibly blames on the kind of life form depicted in the film, with on screen text during the post-movie credits that attempts to take this movie much more seriously than it rightfully earns or deserves, especially in how it tiptoes over the word “Speculated’, which makes these disappearances less factually accurate than the memory of its victims deserve. So the pacing is definitely an issue here, especially with the characters feeling like the kind of one-dimensional types that are neither compelling nor believable, with one such female lead being among my least favorite characters that I remember in recent memory, but they pale in comparison to the thinly written and directed horror, which often makes this film feel like it has been improperly categorized. With the exception of Tatiana’s aforementioned disappearance, there is no semblance of momentary suspense or attempted frights until the final twenty minutes of the film, and even then it’s the kind of bloodless, thrill-less engagement that just kind of runs out of time, instead of satisfyingly finishes. Because so much of the horror is compressed, it forces the script to work overtime not only on the fates of our protagonists, disposing of them uneventfully in ways that feel like McKoy only recently remembered to inflict a body count, but also underutilizing the movie’s monster so tragically that it looks and feels like nothing more than a video game villain of the most grotesquely unoriginal variety. This brings me to the movie’s special effects, which don’t influence any of the aforementioned ambition that I heralded the movie for, and instead prove to be an unavoidably hilarious counteraction to creativity that inadvertently dated this movie’s visuals to sometime around the post-2000 sampling. While I commend the film for shooting on location in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, I wish more time and consideration was spent on monster designs and green-screen work within the depths of this alien ship, as failing to do so materializes an inescapably artificial quality to the engagement that will inevitably disappoint audiences, leaving it feeling closer to ‘Birdemic’ than any alien-fueled horror movie that you’ve seen over the last forty years. Then there’s the dialogue, full of outdated pop culture references and unnecessary narration in conversations that wastes so much screen time echoing what the imagery showed us, just one cut previously. Once you’ve had the unfortunate task of hearing it played out unnaturally between characters, you have no choice but to admit that McKoy has no faith in his audience to remain firmly invested in the dynamic and conflicts between its characters, and though he’s mostly right in this assessment, those who do remain alert and attentive will frequently find themselves subjected to repeating and rehashes that keep the film’s exposition from evolving naturally and gracefully, which could serve as most of the meaning in motivation for why this film is constantly unable to reach a point with the story that it’s attempting to tell. It’s also so sloppily edited that it continuously trips over the sequencing of neighboring scenes that it stitches together, with many such examples disjointing and dejecting the focus of the audience from faithfully following along. Sometimes, it’s as simple as the timing of a conjoining scene intruding on its predecessor too abruptly, while others like a third act flashback tying Alex and Tatiana’s fates together, coming too late to feel like an overwrapping narrative to what’s being discussed in the foreground of the scene. That delayed sentiment really comes across in a majority of the movie’s editing, especially in scenes like a 2 minute sing-along, or echoed repetition in dialogue, that could easily be trimmed from the finished cut, but instead persevere as a collection of speed bumps to the movie’s integrity, with many examples coming to the late parts of that overstuffed opening act. One such example is between our group of protagonists and Tatiana’s parents, with the mother saying “She was always a free spirit”, as a cut to the father has him then saying “Yeah, she was a free spirit”. Might seem inconsequential to most people, but to me it just hammers home what has already been established, serving as these series of momentary kinks in the progress to the narrative that sacrifices urgency when it desperately needs it most. Finally, the performances are a mixed bag of varying degrees of incapability, but primarily Rupert Lazarus and Sidney Nicole Rogers, who approach their characters so drastically different that I find it difficult to assume it’s a result of just bad direction. Lazarus is mostly emotionless in a role that calls for so much emotional vulnerability, made worse by a vapid element of charisma that easily makes him the least influential member of the ensemble, while Rogers emphatically over-exaggerates in deliveries so boisterously obnoxious that the scenes just kind of stop to allow her ample time to incessantly moan, leveling any kind of emotional impact to a scene’s integrity. It would all be less severe if the film was made up of first-timers or relative unknowns, but McKoy and the production somehow got longtime film veteran, Eric Roberts, to join in for a cameo, and between his abrupt disappearance from the film, and his candidly give-a-fuck-less deliveries, it proves that Eric knew exactly what he was getting himself into, trading dignity for a pocket full of green.

OVERALL
‘Lumina’ is one of those bewildering films so atrociously awful that it deserves to be seen and scoffed at, by a group of friends with bottles of alcohol between them. Despite ambition in the depths of an original idea, the execution of long-winded storytelling and cheaply intrusive technical merits continuously trips over itself, resulting in a floundering two-parts science fiction, one-part horror experience that proves intelligent life had nothing to do with a film so appallingly boring.

My Grade: 1/10 or F-