Best movie of this year hands down!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Movie wasn't intriguing in the least. Absolutely no character development. Jumps right into astronauts outer space a lot of wasted time on nothing. Time better spent giving us something to care about in the story line aside from camera glitching. The ending was typical and predictable. Nothing to see here. Low budget waste of time.

Found footage movie about a doomed manned space mission to explore Jupiter's ice moon Europa. Despite a low budget we have a riveting, claustrophobic and suspenseful film which at times made me feel like I was actually on board with the crew. One of the most memorable scenes involves one of the astronauts floating away from the craft to his inevitable death. Truly haunting. As others have pointed out there are goofs, such as the ability to communicate with Earth without any time delay, but these don't detract from this being a really good, intelligent sci fi movie.

Becoming a fan of "genre" cinema in Europe from the Giallo,Nordic Noir and French Film Noir after seeing the original version,I was sad to learn about Dragon Tattoo star Michael Nyqvist's death. Wanting to pay tribute with a Nyqvist viewing,I re-read a positive review Kim Newman gave to a Nyqvist's Sci-Fi movie,which led to me filling a report in.The plot:Joining up to go on a mission to explore Jupiter's fourth largest moon, astronauts William Xu/James Corrigan/ Daniel Luxembourg/Katya Petrovna/Andrei Blok and Rosa Dasque set off on a rocket (covered in cameras so control room can keep records) to explore the surface of the moon,and find out if it is inhabitable. Landing on the moon,the crew find it to be entirely iced. Going out to explore the lonely moon,the crew find their planned report into the exploration to be interrupted by a radioactive wave.View on the film:Drilling orders into the team like a well-oiled mechanic, Michael Nyqvist gives a terrific performance as Andrei Blok,whose gruff orders to the rest of the crew are softened by Nyqvist keeping it based round Blok's focus on the completion of the mission. Grasping the threads of the research as they are iced up, Anamaria Marinca gives a very good performance as Rosa Dasque,who is given a quick- witted thoughtfulness by Marinca.Largely playing by the rules, ( with a few exceptions being stylish shots of the crew looking out across the galaxy,and the score by Battlestar's Bear McCreary bringing an eerie mood up from the surface) of the Found Footage genre,director Sebastián Cordero & cinematographer Enrique Chediak impressively find space for gripping tension with pristine editing and realistic placings of the cameras landing on the isolation of the ship. Looking towards Horror,Cordero holds back for something more psychological,with an excellent use of sound bringing the unknown things on the planet into the ship.Making the first 30 minutes of the mission a success,the screenplay by Philip Gelatt superbly grounds the Sci-Fi in realism,from the astronauts taking great care to fully explore the planet,to the care that they have for each other never being spoken,but coming across in the tiny gestures they do for each other. Recording over the gory horror of the "Found Footage" genre, Gelatt cleverly makes the terror uncovered be one which actually gives meaning to their exploration,as Europa files a report.

Ever since Blair Witch, one of the hip trends in the horror genre is the "found footage" concept. One gets the impression that the producers of Europa Report wanted to glam on to that concept and be one of the first sci-fi movies to do so. Unfortunately, it doesn't work here, as the editing makes the story line erratic, disjointed and confusing. I'm still trying to figure out how/why the Rosa Dasque character (the last victim of the failed mission) provides a calm solo narrative supposedly AFTER her apparent death.The basic plot has the potential to be a great one, as I love sci-fi movies that rely on actual science. The filmmakers of ER made a noble attempt at weaving a relevant story, but here, too, they come up short, mainly due to the ensemble. The characters are one dimensional and I found it difficult to care for them. There's about a ten second spot where one of the men is trying to communicate with his three year old son, trying to establish some humanity, but it comes across as cheap and disingenuous. The writers used the right scientific lingo, but the actors couldn't deliver it with any conviction or authenticity. You just didn't get the feel that these people were highly trained scientists.Then there's the mechanics and physical aspects. Presumably, since this space vessel is going to Europa (about 400 million miles from Earth), this film is set in the distant future. The sets, CGI and FX are all products of 2013 production techniques, so that the feel and technology seem grossly out of place. For example, with HD photography and the forward direction it's going, wouldn't you think that the ship would have better on-board/exterior cameras and computer graphics? This, of course, may be explained by the limited budget, as I understand this is an indie film.I didn't totally trash this film because there's a few relatively suspenseful scenes, and I'm extremely forgivable with the suspension of disbelief. I think the filmmakers and actors had their hearts in the right place. But there are other much better sci-fi movies out there. Two I recommend are Ex Machina, one of the most thought-provoking sci- fi films since The Matrix and AI; and Under the Skin, an interestingly quirky film that I found held my attention in a mesmerizing way, despite its lack of action.