Directed and written by Jefferson Moneo
Starring Camille Rowe, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Antonia Zegers
Runtime:1 hour and 33 minutes
Unrated
Available from Kino Lorber on February 15

by Hunter Bush, Staff Writer

Writer/director Jefferson Moneo seems like a real character. His IMDb profile says he comes from a family of professional wrestlers and that his family originated with Roma Gypsy immigrants to Canada. In the press release for his latest film, Cosmic Dawn, it says he was abducted outside of Saskatchewan, probed (twice), and returned with the ability to speak Reptine–the language of the aliens. So it wouldn’t have been surprising if Cosmic Dawn had been a madcap rollercoaster ride, crammed wall-to-wall with oddball, eccentric characters. Why then, is the film so by-the-numbers?

Cosmic Dawn follows Aurora (Camille Rowe) whose mother was abducted when Aurora was a child, leading to years of therapy and psych medications. One night after she sees a woman beckoning her into a bookstore, she meets Natalie (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and the two hit it off discussing alien abductions. Natalie recommends a book called Cosmic Dawn, which details the beliefs of the pseudo religion of the same name. Aurora realizes the book’s author Elyse (Antonia Zegers) was the woman she saw beckoning her into the bookshop. Later, she notices an illustration in the book inside matches a tattoo she has on her arm. This is all very spooky, but also very familiar, well-tread ground. Aurora eventually joins the Cosmic Dawn in their compound and meets Tom (Joshua Burge) whose skepticism helps to keep her grounded. Interspersed with all of this, we also witness Aurora four years after these events. She no longer seems to be a member of the Cosmic Dawn, and eventually we find she’s actively seeking out information about them.

These four year time jumps (forward and backward) are an extremely baffling choice. While they are used to stage a few mysteries (What happened to Elyse four years ago? Why is Aunt Caroline in a wheelchair?) they’re so frequent and repetitive as to be kind of exhausting. Every scene alternates between the “Four Years Earlier” and “Four Years Later” timelines. I’m obviously not suggesting the flashback/forward conceit entirely be done away with, just that it could have been used more sparingly and to greater effect.

The biggest issue with Cosmic Dawn is that while all these characters are boring, first draft, stock alien cultist characters, simultaneously, I thought all of the performances were really pretty solid. Some shine a bit brighter than others but there’s not an out-and-out “bad” performance here. Camille Rowe is genuinely magnetic and avoids the pitfalls of the character archetype she’s playing. Aurora is so used to being disbelieved and seen as “crazy” that she keeps everyone at arm’s length. Doubtless we’re all familiar with these traits and the tendency for an actor to push too far into unlikeability where you genuinely wonder how anyone could even want to get to know them. Rowe plays the character with a bruised resilience. In the bookstore, Natalie tries to start a conversation and Aurora shuts her down by saying “I don’t need any help (browsing)”. When Natalie replies “Well, I’ll leave you alone then”, Aurora recognizes this as the pattern of her life in microcosm and quietly bursts into tears.

As Natalie, Emmanuelle Chriqui is better at playing a young woman working in a bookstore than a cultist. Once the story moves “up north” she begins to take on a checklist of “creepy cultist” character tics: speaking in tongues, mysterious seizures, robotic speech, to name a few. Her performance starts to get lost under all those hats. On the other hand, as Tom, Joshua Burge underplays his character’s quirks, making his cynicism seem more lighthearted and inviting. There’s an absolutely “batnanas” (+) turn for him at the end which I won’t spoil besides saying that it seems like a perfunctory addition to the film’s final moments.  

Cosmic Dawn feels like it was trying to be Martha Marcy May Marlene but with a UFO cult. But whereas that film’s relative stillness and quiet transitions from idyllic to sinister as more of the characters’ history is revealed, Cosmic Dawn kind of dumps everything out on the table in a messy pile, like a club kid looking for her lighter. It wraps up with an ending that’s supposed to make us feel good in a vague and ultimately unsatisfying way.

A few bright sides here. The Dawn’s compound is located at a real place, an art installation from Peter Camini called Screaming Heads located at Midlothian Castle in Burk’s Falls Ontario. The grounds are dotted with huge round symbols the size of doorways that resemble a screaming face. The symbol that Aurora recognizes and has tattooed on her wrist is one of these. It looks  like the graffiti character Kilroy (the guy peeking over a wall) combined with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” There’s also a sound effect used in the time jump transitions that is  *exactly*  from Unsolved Mysteries, from right before Robert Stack would drop an update on you. I loved hearing it. It’s just so silly.

Far be it from me to tell anyone how to do their job - or how to follow their passion - but Jefferson Moneo could do worse than to check out two films I caught at last year’s Fantasia Fest: Strawberry Mansion from writer/directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, and King Knight from writer/director Richard Bates Jr. Both films play their unusual story events fairly straight-faced and take them seriously, but the characters are degrees more interesting, unique and memorable. That elasticity of tone could have done Cosmic Dawn a world of good.