Lunopolis

Lunopolis serves up an ambitious but flawed combination of Blair Witch Project mockumentary, X-Files paranormal paranoia, time travel, and hokey intellectual pretension. When dunderheaded filmmakers Matt (Matthew Avant, also the writer-director) and Sonny (Hal Maynor) decide to check out claims that humans have lived on the moon for years and are manipulating events on Earth, their investigation leads them to a fishing shack in a Louisiana swamp where they discover a vast underwater storehouse and a mysterious electronic contraption that resembles a grade-school science project gone awry (in one genuinely creepy moment, the crew is chased briefly by a shadowy figure but manages to escape with the device intact). Eventually the weird object—which turns out to be an honest-to-goodness time machine—is traced to a sinister organization called the Church of Lunology, and the meddlesome camera-toters find themselves confronted by Lunology guardians who want it back. But it's not until they visit a seemingly harmless old retiree, David James (Dave Potter), that they begin to realize the true power Lunology has over the future. Where Avant really runs into complications is in the overabundance of corny mock-interviews with fictional experts who interrupt the central action, adding unnecessary white noise to an already static-heavy narrative that struggles to link UFOs, the moon, time travel, world history, dimensional theory, and immortality. Still, on the basis of chutzpah alone, Lunopolis should be considered a strong optional purchase. (M. Sandlin)