Fantastic Planet Film Festival: Utterly drenched in the convoluted lore that exists within the world of UFO-cultists, fringe-science theorists and anti-establishment agitators, Matthew J Avant’s time-traveller-themed mock-umentary is seriously wacky but undeniably compelling. A cult following amongst those that still have a Fox Mulder poster pinned to their man-cave wall is a certainty.
The main protagonists are three inquisitive men who seem old enough to know better – Nate (Nathan Avant), Arte (Arte Richard) and the occasionally-glimpsed director of the faux doco (Jed Himel). The trio are made aware of a tape of a frantic late-night conspiracy-themed radio show caller, who sounds delusional and paranoid but also inconsolably frightened; the voice rants about the 'city on the moon’, aka Lunopolis, and how the US government has known about the existence of a centuries-old lunar population that have lived amongst us for decades.
Intrigued, the three men investigate a package sent to the radio station that contains a polaroid photo, which may or may not be inscribed with map co-ordinates. Upon investigation, Nate and Arte uncover an underground facility in the bayous of Louisiana... which contains a reality-bending back-pack...that runs on a glowing green moon rock... that is central to the philosophies of the Church of Lunology... which may be a cover for the moon people. Like I said, wacky.
For most of its first half, Lunopolis bounces along at a captivating pace holding one’s attention with deftly-handled humour, a fun, natural chemistry between the leads and a growing sense of menace (seems the Church of Lunologists subscribe to the same 'use-by-2012’ calendar as the Mayans). A visit to the Church’s nondescript headquarters and a run-in with its mysterious inhabitants is a highlight, especially the surprising mode of escape that a carload of Lunologists choose to employ.
Director Avant initially paints the average Lunologist (who resembles the mythical 'tall-blond-men’ that UFOlogists and alien abductees speak of) as a blinkered and potentially dangerous follower of an unsubstantiated prophet, one J. Ari Hilliard. Though the film’s main aim is to be a smart sci-fi thriller, it also scores points for its obvious-but-endearing skewering of Scientology.
It will be the mid-section of the film, in which gravel-voiced backwoods loner David James (a charismatic Dave Potter) enlightens the film crew as to the vastness of the Lunologist’s impact on mankind, where the believers and non-believers will part ways. Set to a beating-heart music track, James and a procession of intercut academic types provide irrefutable truths pertaining to the intricacies of science, culture, religion and the supernatural, all of which seem to have been formed by 'transient dimensionaries’ – moon people who exist across the multiple plans of reality in which we all co-exist.
This wad of exposition, lengthy but expertly cut-together, repositions the film as a dense hybrid of Alex Proyas’ Dark City (1998) and the new-agey, quantum-physics specu-mentary What The #$*! Do We Know?! (2004). It sucks some of the fun out of the picture but also goes to show just how much thought multi-hyphenate Avant and his producer Hal Maynor afforded the complex premise. The finale – the tricky, double-helix denouement of the myriad of story strands and visual clues – is both 'sci-fi cool’ and emotionally impactful. If you’re still with the film come the end credits roll, Lunopolis’ mix of genre thrills, seamless no-budget effects and 'The Truth Is Out There’ theorising will have proved every bit as irresistible to you as it did to me.
