Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Jefferson Moneo
Starring: Camille Rowe, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Antonia Zegers, Joshua Burge, Phil Granger
Looking back, one of the sweetest aspects of the otherwise awful 1990s was
the naïve enthusiasm we had for conspiracy theories. Not only the curious,
escapist nature of how we questioned the status quo in that decade, but
also what we believed they were actually keeping back from us back then.
Today the conspiracy theory is mainstream and toxic and anything but a bit
of a laugh; it is people beating the shit out of each other in Trafalgar
Square, it’s something to do with paedophiles and pizza, it’s the horrible
credence of Epstein’s island. Back then we watched
The X-Files and had earnest conversations about how much
shady government depts ‘actually knew’, we read 'The Invisibles' and
squinted at aerial photos apparently taken of Area 51. Congruously, the
tackier end of pre-millennial rave culture went hand in hand with the
newly enthused stoner ufology; catalysed by the illusion of mind expansion
which ecstasy offered and the sense of counterculture engendered by the
music, the dayglo mise-en-scene and lava lamp iconography fitted the
extra-terrestrial zeitgeist like a Kappa tracksuit. Take me to your
dealer, yeah?
In an early scene, writer/director Jefferson Moneo’s
Cosmic Dawn recognises this bygone synchronicity. After a
charmingly ramshackle scene involving a little girl witnessing her mom
being abducted by aliens in some backwoods, we catch up years later with
said kid as an adult raver about town. All glitter eyes and thrown shapes,
the sequence features Aurora (Camille Rowe) in an underground
nightclub lit like the set of
Mandy. A bloke, who in his mirrored shades and ‘tache looks like he should be
in the venue down the road with the rest of the
Cruising extras, tries putting one on her. Mineshaft gives
her a white tablet, and she becomes immediately ‘loved up’, suddenly
imagining her suitor as Bossk'wassak'Cradossk off Star Wars. Inner space/outer space: woah.
Is the lingering trauma of the third kind contact which has seemingly
doomed Aurora to a life of going out and dancing now presenting in clumsy
hallucination, or is she being galactically stalked? After waking up in
hospital and rushing off in a fit of rattled pique, Aurora seeks sanctuary
in a second-hand book shop wherein she happens upon one of those big
glossy ‘Encyclopaedias of the Unexplained’ we’d all pore over in the
school library on rainy dinner times (another pleasingly nostalgic touch).
She lets off some steam to the teller, who, having seen her coming,
reaches into the recesses of the shelves and gives Aurora the hard stuff
of a book written by a practising UFO cultist. Aurora goes home and
notices that she has a prominent tattoo on her forearm which matches one
of the esoteric diagrams in the tome. When I say ‘notices’, in the film it
is unclear whether Aurora is simply observing the similarity between her
ink and the drawing in the book, or if she was previously aware of it but
has never been inclined to investigate what it is, or if this indeed is
the first time she has noted the hand drawn black circle on her skin.
Anyway, she ends up joining the cult.
After a promising opening, the confusion intensifies: title cards tell us
that we are ‘Four Years Later’ and then ‘Four Years Earlier’ and then back
again. Sometimes this happens within moments, with no discernible aging of
Aurora, which is very fortunate considering she is a full-on caner (a
deathless interchange in the film: ‘How long have you been using
drugs?’...’Since I was born’-!). We stick with Aurora’s time in the cult
and the period that she has extricated herself from it, with the plot
hinging on how authentic the sect is, and just how sinister they may turn
out to be.
Is writer/director Moneo filming from experience? His imdb biography makes
bald reference to his own alien abduction (along with boasts concerning
‘trademark clothing’ and familial links to Sitting Bull, making for a very
entertaining bio), so perhaps Cosmic Dawn is a valuable
document which contains important truths concerning institutions and
people from other planets. As pop cultural entertainment, however, like
its main character it loses its way. Early on it becomes fairly clear the
distribution of the low budget was unevenly frontloaded, so any hope of
aliens showing up disappears into jejune, repetitive camera trickery
designed to express Aurora’s fractured mindset. There are some colourful
sequences, and if you were to watch Cosmic Dawn in a state
of artificial relaxation (or if you are from the '90s) then there is an
increased possibility you might get more out of it, but for the rest of us
it may turn out to be a bit of a cosmic drag.
Cosmic Dawn is in US cinemas and on
VOD from February 11th. A UK/ROI release has yet to be announced.
