Aurora’s (Camille Rowe) life is kind of a mess. She spends her nights popping pills and dancing among strangers. But who can blame her after the trippy event she witnessed as a child?
Aurora’s mom was a space nerd. On one fateful night, she took her daughter into the woods to watch the stars and camp beneath a blood moon. But after Aurora calls it a night and retreats to her tent, something otherworldly takes place. Bright lights fall from the sky like neon raindrops, and Aurora’s mom feels compelled to make her way into a clearing.
COSMIC DAWN VIDEO REVIEW
Aurora wakes up in time to see her mom communing with something not of this earth. Her mother disappeared that night, never to be heard from again, and Aurora’s left with fuzzy memories of the traumatic night.
Flashforward 20 years and grownup Aurora believes aliens abducted her mom. While browsing the new age section of a bookstore, she meets Natalie (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a friendly woman who understands Aurora’s trauma. Natalie invites Aurora to join a UFO cult led by the enigmatic Elyse (Antonia Zegers).
Elyse seems to have the answers Aurora spent a lifetime seeking, but are the cult leader’s promises too good to be true?
First off, this moody sci-fi thriller looks and sounds fantastic. An eerie feeling washed over me the second the credits hit, and it never let up. Although Cosmic Dawn is creepy, it’s not scary, so if you’re a horror lightweight, don’t let the whole alien death cult vibe scare you off.
Alan Howarth’s menacing score intensifies the film’s dark tone. Howarth, a John Carpenter collaborator, worked on Escape from New York, Christine, and Big Trouble in Little China. And that grimy, pulsing signature sound plunges you deeper in the experience.
Adding to the knockout score are eight tracks from electropop rockers MGMT – Andrew VanWyngarden wrote five original tracks exclusively for Cosmic Dawn. MGMT’s breezy electronic sound pairs beautifully with Howarth’s synth-heavy score. I caught myself nodding my head a few times, which is only an issue because I watched Cosmic Dawn in a VR headset.
Writer-director Jefferson Moneo approached the material from a unique perspective. In the film’s press notes, Moneo states the film was shaped by an extraterrestrial encounter he experienced as a child. The incident motivated him to craft a movie about someone with a story nobody believes.
This concept makes for morally murky material in 2022. You can always find people who share your delusional beliefs in the internet age. Finding enough people who believe the same nonsense doesn’t transform that nonsense into facts. We see this happening today with folks who claim the earth is flat or think COVID vaccines contain microchips. Cosmic Dawn makes the case we shouldn’t tune out people’s ridiculous beliefs.
This line of thinking is a slippery slope. People disagreeing with a fact doesn’t nullify the fact. But sometimes, conventional thinking is wrong. A cultural shift or scientific breakthrough reshapes what people believe as true. It takes a vocal minority to realign society’s belief system.
I see where Moneo is coming from regarding UFOs/UAPs. UFO experiencers have been laughed at, gaslit, and blown off for decades despite the American military taking UFO cases seriously.
The US military has a history of scrambling fighter jets to pursue UFOs that are confirmed by credible witnesses and picked up on radar. After 75 years of denial the military is finally acknowledging that these objects are real and maneuvering through American airspace. They’ve also confirmed creating departments dedicated to tracking UFOs and determining what they are and where they come from.
Sometimes (but not often), there’s something to the nonsense.
I would enjoy Cosmic Dawn a lot more if it dug into the nitty-gritty of Aurora’s struggle. What’s life like for someone who believes they’ve witnessed something impossible? How do they deal with skeptics? And how do they keep their self-doubts at bay?
Cosmic Dawn never ventures down this intriguing rabbit hole because there’s not much to its thinly sketched protagonist. We empathize with Aurora and feel her stress and anxiety, the way we feel Laurie Strode’s stress and anxiety in Halloween. But we never really get inside the character’s head. The meatier version of this story would play into Aurora’s inner conflict. Strong characters are defined by their choices, but Aurora is defined by her trauma.
Let me know your thoughts about Cosmic Dawn on Twitter and in the comments below. If you enjoyed this review, please help out the site by sharing it on social media. And keep coming back to VSR for new reviews, interviews, and videos.
