There are bad movies, there are worse movies and then there’s ‘Lumina’ that combines a lot of elements of a bad movie, poorly executed in every sense of the word. One begins to wonder if they made the movie, in the hopes of being the ‘next The Room or Birdemic’, as it does a terrible job at everything. What other way would one make sense of the brain-dead shot selections, haphazardly created character arcs, illogical storylines and dialogue that feels as if it was written by a language model or Google Translate that was attempting to translate something in no particular manner? Eric Roberts, widely regarded as one of the most hardworking individuals of all time, appears in the film for only two minutes and almost saves the film at least a little from his great line delivery but eventually even that scene is absorbed into the black hole-like stupidity this film seems to enjoy so much. Worst of all, Roberts shot over 700 films in his outstanding career and it is hard to belive there are more terrible films than this one shooting made over 700 просто забес поперек у Парке.
“Lumina” begins with a couple, Alex (Rupert Lazarus) and Tatiana (Eleanor Williams), in a relationship drama. However, her feelings for Alex are complicated by an ex lover Delilah (Andrea Tivador) who tries to win him back; yes, it does take a long time. After all that, it’s either aliens or inner demons that abduct Tatiana and take her away in a tasteless CGI sequence that leaves Alex so dejected that he wears an absurdly fake beard and overacts in every scene. This is the point where he submits the most expressive performance. The turning point for me in the film was when Alex is looking over into a pool, and sees an apparition of the long lost Tatiana in a stylistic reference to Carl Weathers in the clouds in the back of “Happy Gilmore”. It’s one in many moments that seem like they cannot be anything but bad.
Before you know it, Tatiana’s friends, Alex, Delilah, and George, along with Patricia Rogers, are ready to travel around the globe in search of their missing friend. However, this introduces them to a strange alien kidnapper named Thom (played by Roberts) whose brief role in this particular film was obviously filmed simply to help finance the picture, and this ends with a foot chase of spectacular nonsense.
Our group heads on the road once more, this time garnering the help of Tatiana’s parents concerning her previous apparent abductions about which she somehow did not inform Alex, and even passing through a sagebrush desert, only to find a bunker that’s either on the government’s black list or is owned by aliens or whatever, but at such an advanced stage in the film that it is hard to give a shit about. And the awful CGI in which characters and their threats reside in very different spheres does not help either.
Where does one even begin to talk about “Lumina”? This couldn’t possibly have been an absolute mess as some scenes seem to take forever it’s 112 minutes! Others could use some more shooting, so there are rather abrupt edits rather than the film having the usual turns. Nothing makes any damn sense and so choosing particular WTF scenes on the first viewing is pointless but there is one with a goat that is seared into my memory forever.
Once more, perhaps that is the aim. I definitely recall “The Room” which I feel has been so much better than many of the bad films made in the same year or even that decade. And I will remember “Lumina” as people remember nightmares, in which aliens abducted them. To be frank, that could itself be a nice experience.
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