In 1988 in Philadelphia, several people simultaneously hemorrhage to death as their brains experience massive blood loss. Police officer Thomas Lockhart and his partner, Maddox, investigate the case with Lockhart's brother-in-law, Detective Holt. Lockhart concludes that the deaths are connected when he finds similar puncture wounds on each victim. Lockhart and Maddox find an assault victim with the same wounds; she describes her assailant as a black woman with a wounded hand before dying. Lockhart and Maddox find the suspect and chase her into a subway, where she subdues Maddox. When Lockhart confronts her, the suspect reveals details about his life, including that his wife will give birth that day. She predicts her own death just prior to a struggle, which ends with a train striking and killing her. Although confused about the many unexplained details, the police close the case. Meanwhile, Lockhart's wife dies in childbirth.
Nine years later in 1997, an apparent copycat begins another killing spree. Lockhart, now a detective caring for his young daughter Amy, can find no apparent motive or connection between the victims. Lockhart traces keys retrieved in 1988 to an aircraft manufactured in 1996. Naveen Rao, a physicist, insists this is proof of time travel, but Maddox and Lockhart ignore him. After tracking the copycat to an airfield, Lockhart is shocked to find the same suspect from 1988, who is alive and has not aged. She unintentionally kills Maddox and takes Lockhart hostage, again revealing knowledge about his life she could not know. After warning him off, she disappears.
In 2006, Lockhart is a private investigator obsessed with solving the case, which he now believes involves time travel and Dr. Rao, who has disappeared. The teenage Amy lives with Holt, and Lockhart maintains only occasional contact with her. Lockhart discovers a previously unrecorded victim from the 1988 murders and visits the victim's wife, who reveals her husband ran a white nationalist militia group. Lockhart meets Holt and advances the theory that the suspect is moving back in time as they are moving forward, killing each member of the terrorist group, but Holt dismisses the theory and insists Lockhart get psychiatric help. Lockhart steals Holt's badge, uses it to impersonate a police officer, and tracks down the former girlfriend of the white nationalist leader, arriving at her home to find she has been murdered by the suspect. Lockhart chases the suspect and wounds her hand with a bullet before she disappears in a time machine. Lockhart is arrested by Holt as an unseen Rao watches.
In 2015, while waiting for the woman on the beach, Lockhart listens to a voice message from Amy asking him to come to the birth of her child. He is suddenly kidnapped by Rao. Rao admits to developing the technology the woman uses to kill her victims, an injection whose effects can be remotely triggered through time. He says he now believes her cause is justified, and that she is killing only those who inspired the perpetrators of a terrible tragedy. Lockhart escapes from Rao and confronts the woman — who reveals herself as Rya, Amy's daughter and his granddaughter.
Many years later, Lockhart convinces an adult Rya to take the mission after the militia group's terrorism triggered a new civil war in 2024, when she was only nine. Rya is traveling backwards in time, appearing every nine years in reverse chronological order, injecting her targets in the back of the neck with a remotely triggered isotope. From her perspective, the events of 2006 have yet to occur, and her hand is not yet wounded. Overcome with guilt over causing his own granddaughter's death, Lockhart confesses that he killed her in 1988. Convinced that her cause is just, he lets her complete her mission. After Rya's departure into the past, an elderly Rao triggers the injections, killing Rya's targets and erasing the terrorist attack and subsequent civil war from the timeline. Back in 2015, Lockhart reunites with his family and embraces a chance at a new future with his granddaughter.
Speaking about the project, director Mickle declared:
“Gregory [Weidman] and Geoff’s [Tock] script is such a great mind bender and beautifully weaves together all my favorite genres, Boyd [Holbrook] is going to eat this role alive and show why he’s one of the best young actors working today. We’re lucky to have an incredibly talented producing team and a home like Netflix that’s excited to take chances. Any studio that makes Okja has a permanent place in my heart.”[4]
The film had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 21, 2019.[6] On September 27, 2019, the film was available to stream on Netflix.[7]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 57% of 53 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "In the Shadow of the Moon isn't always successful at balancing its assorted elements, but its struggles may be diverting enough to warrant a stream."[8]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 48 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[9] High on Films website wrote "Certainly not on par with Jim Mickle's previous directorial efforts".[10]
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