Don't Come Back from the Moon

From its opening moments through its pitch-perfect closing notes, Don’t Come Back from the Moon is a stunning and stark and beautiful thing to behold.

The movie’s emotional potency is undeniable, its slow crescendo of wounded feelings and shimmering photography leaving unexpected imprints on the eyes and heart.

I liked the sensory strengths of a movie without anything of beauty to look at, but Don’t Come Back From the Moon eventually fails to involve viewers completely because it’s about the consequences of a wasted life instead of the sorry events that lead up to one. Poignant and close, but no cigar.

The movie captivates and fascinates as a free-form dream constantly poised on a knife edge between roiling nightmare and reassuring resolution. The surprising yet satisfyingly ambiguous ending allows for either option.

Though the story’s early stretches feel slender and repetitive, Cheung gathers the undertow of atmosphere and emotion for a beautifully realized final half-hour, matching the striking visuals with involving, unpredictable interactions.

It’s an atmosphere piece first and foremost, and an effective one. But the characters, particularly the teens, feel primarily like micro-vignette archetypes of scattershot resonance rather than flesh-and-blood figures forming a tapestry in a taut tale.

For a movie that is supposedly about the consequences of absentee fathers, it sure has little of importance to say about the families they desert. The Moon deserves better symbolism.