Separating Moon (2009) and the films it pays homage to such as Alien(1979), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969) and Solaris (1972), is the presentation of a gritty realism where space and the universe beyond earth is not purely a camp battleground where lycra-clad warriors engage in mortal combat with masked super-villains. This gritty realism is best shown in the jobs and work carried out by the central characters occupying these films. All these characters are workers of some kind doing mundane, contractual jobs. The underlining message from the filmmaker’s is: Given the speed in which technology is advancing, in the future, normal people will be working in space and not for adventure or to save the universe but to work.
The idea of earth-bound monotonous jobs being transferred into space lends an air of bleakness and, at times, dread to films such as Moon and Alien. In the past, and particularly in America, space and the moon were presented to the public as exciting places of the unknown, full of adventure. The early sci-fi films of the 50’s would show all-American heroes in huge garish spacesuits taking on seemingly invincible adversaries on exotic looking planets littered with craters and cliffs. Space and the universe were not meant to be places of work where the mundane daily grind was simply transferred from earth as a means of making money for mysterious ‘companies’ and all due to the relentless march of technology and the desire for profit.
The crew of Alien’s Nostromo and Moon’s Sam Bell are workers, pure and simple. These workers have signed contracts back on earth for greedy unnamed companies that exist purely for profit and to satisfy, as Sam states, their ‘shareholders and investors’. Like all of us, Nostromo’s crew and Sam Bell need to work. Sam Bell sends back the vital fuel, helium-3, using repetitive skills he has learned through training. Alien’s crew operate a haulage ship carrying vast amounts of mineral ore back to earth, a task not drastically different from haulage truckers on our roads today. These are normal people doing average, even boring jobs. Any of the fantasy and attractiveness of space alluded to in early sci-fi films, books and comics is removed as audiences are given the grim reality check and ultimate reminder that, no matter where you are, some things don’t change- a job is a job.
It is when uncertainty and terror are added to such deep-space monotony that a palpable sense of fear emerges. In the case of Alien, this terror and dread is overt and constant while in Moon it is subtle and sporadic but always lurking beneath the surface. It is not discussed often enough that fear and horror can effectively be evoked via the sense of depression that occurs through experiencing moments of bleakness and futility. So much of the genuinely frightening moments in film have occurred within such circumstances and surroundings that are drab, depressing and without hope. Candyman (1992), for instance, was set, uniquely, within the grey and poverty stricken urban nightmare of the Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago rather than a castle bathed in fog or a haunted house. The horror of Candyman’s basic story was heightened by the palpably real and natural settings in which it took place. In Cabrini Green, people with nothing are terrorised. This was an innovative departure from the characters and settings in which so many horror films had been set in the years before.
Alien’s Nostromo contains no glitzy or attractive design and colour schemes and is the haulage truck of the spaceship world. In the future those people that once drove coal and cargo up and down the motorways will haul mineral ore through space and such blue-collar, basic work is reflected in the design of the spaceships. The ship is dark, cold and depressing, a place of work, certainly not a spectacle. When the alien is let loose on the Nostromo, the chaos and murder that ensues is all the more terrifying for the bluntly real and seemingly authentic environment its takes place in. In this respect,Moon is no different to Alien. As Sam loses his mind aboard his ship while carrying out a mind bogglingly long 3 year solo contract, the prospect of the loss of his sanity in what is merely a future representation of the modern office, is a frightening one. It reminds us that the idea of losing our minds and of slowly losing control may not necessarily occur in the world of the unknown or the mythical but in our offices at the mercy of unsympathetic companies who just don’t care.
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