In the Shadow of the Moon is a 2019 science-fiction thriller starring Boyd Holbrook, Cleopatra Coleman and and Michael C. Hall. It was released on Netflix.
Philadelphia, 2024. As a tattered flag flutters past, we are shown the bombed-out streets of Center City, Philadelphia.
Philadelphia, 1988. Officer Thomas "Lock" Lockhart wakes up to a call involving a crashed SEPTA bus and a dead driver. Finding and fighting off the attacker, the woman congratulates him on the birth of his daughter and apologizes about his partner before she falls into the path of an oncoming subway train. From there, idle curiosity turns into a consuming obsession for answers.
In the Shadow of the Moon provides examples of:
- Accidental Aiming Skills: In 1997, Rya's hasty reaction shot with a shotgun at someone behind her results in her Accidental Murder of Maddox via Boom, Headshot!.
- Accidental Murder:
- In 1988, Lockhart's attempt to apprehend the killer results in her stumbling into the path of a speeding subway train instead, which turns her into Ludicrous Gibs.
- In 1997, Rya accidentally kills Maddox with a shotgun blast to the face.
- Agent Scully: Holt, to Lockhart's consternation.
- All There in the Manual: Rya is only named in the credits.
- Ambition Is Evil: Or rather, ambition is reckless as it’s partially a desire for a promotion to a detective that gets Lockhart first involved in the case which will consume his life and cause him to kill his time traveling granddaughter.
- Arc Words: "I'll be seeing you."
- Artistic License – Physics:
- Rao's 1997 Techno Babble explanation of how the supermoon's gravity interacts with "electromagnetic pockets" to enable Time Travel makes no scientific sense in the world of physics as we know it today.
- Also Lock getting tossed out of a plane, without any injuries from a fall of at least a hundred feet.
- Asshole Victim: While most victims of the killer are just regular people, two are members of a right-wing militia. This becomes VERY important later on.
- Bald Head of Toughness: The killer, Rya, is a woman and her head is entirely shaved. She's a very capable opponent, showing great strength and speed and some Made of Iron tendencies, like shaking off a bullet lodged in her wrist.
- Bittersweet Ending: Rya is able to prevent the Civil War from happening with Lock learning he's the one to send her to it, even if it means allowing his granddaughter to die in the past. Nevertheless, Rya seems content with it, not only because it will prevent the war, but also knowing she became just like he is: determined to do what's right.
- Black Dude Dies First: The first of the main cast to die is Rya. Not from her perspective, though.
- Blood from the Mouth: And from the ears. And eyes. And just about every other orifice humans have on their heads. This is how the killer's victims die. The weapon that causes it is so horrific that it literally flushes the victim's brain out of their skull along with all the blood that used to be in there.
- Cassandra Truth: Dr. Rao comes to Lock in 1997 claiming that the supermoon is the reason for the exactly-similar murders. While Maddox dismisses him, Lock is clearly contemplating the idea.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- Lock buys his wife a bracelet at the start of the movie. It proves that Rya is his granddaughter.
- Amy's husband, mentioned first when Lockart picks her up from school in 2006 and with whom she has a child in 2015. The fact that he never appears on-screen can clue more savvy viewers on the fact that there is something meaningful about his appearance that is being kept hidden. Specifically, that he is black, and so will be Amy's daughter, Rya.
- Dead Partner: Double Subverted. Rya injures Maddox in the first killing spree, and when she sees Lockhart a bit later she apologizes about his partner. Maddox survives though, although he's left with a limp. Until 1997, anyway, when chronologically Rya met him earlier and he does die.
- Death by Childbirth: As Lockhart has his first run in with the killer, his wife goes into labor. He has enough time to kiss his wife and be by her side before she dies of a hemorrhage.
- Divided States of America: Implied by the ending narration, when Rya explains that the Real American Movement's attack eventually leads to civil war. This is why she time-travels, to prevent it.
- Foreshadowing:
- One of the first victims is carrying a book on Thomas Jefferson. One of the second victims was teaching a college class involving Josiah Warren. The last before we finally realize the connection between the murder victims is a Confederate flag on the house of a window of one of them.
- In the first minute of the movie, we see the flag of the militia. So, when we hear about the militia and see that same flag later on, we know they have something to do with the future.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Lock and Holt meet in 2006 in the diner, the TV shows that there have been "tri-state cemetery disturbances." Just after Lock was digging up a grave.
- Good Is Not Nice: See I Did What I Had to Do below.
- High-School Sweethearts: Amy was dating her future husband George back when she was eighteen.
- How We Got Here: The film starts by showing us the aftermath of a devastating bombing in 2024, then flashes back to 1988 to start the story. Subverted, as a key aspect of the story is stopping that from happening in the first place. It works out in the end, and that bombing doesn't happen.
- I Did What I Had to Do: An interesting case. It turns out that the killer is targeting anyone who either helped to form a militia whose terrorist attack would start a new American civil war in 2024, or did something particularly nasty in the war itself. Going by Dr. Rao's "how far back would you have to go" monologue, some of these people are completely innocent in the time when she kills them.
- It's All About Me: Lockhart starts out genuinely wanting to catch a serial killer responsible for half a dozen gruesome murders, but as his chase drags on through the following decades, his motivation turns into a pure case of "I want my old life back, even if it means the rest of the nation goes down in flames".
- Long-Lost Relative: Rya is mixed race, with a black father and white mother. This allows the reveal of her being Lockhart's granddaughter to be a surprise, since he's white (his daughter was her mother).
- Ludicrous Gibs:
- Lockhart's first encounter with the killer ends with her splattered on the windshield of a speeding subway train. When her body is shown afterwards, it's been literally torn to pieces, with the torso ripped apart at the waist and at least one of her arms severed.
- On a less severe but no less gruesome note, the killer's weapon essentially flushes her victims' brains out of their skulls in little pieces. Yikes.
- Made of Iron: Rya performs most of her mission including multiple chases with the police with a .38 bullet lodged in her wrist, which she doesn't even seem to notice most of the time.
- Missing Mom: Lockhart's daughter Amy never met her mother. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't put nearly as much emphasis on remembering her as Lock does.
- Mistaken For Crazy: As his obsession grows with finding out who is killing every nine years and why, Lock looks to his family like he's using the story of a future time traveler to justify his obsession. At one point, he even got hauled away by orderlies, presumably to a psych ward.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: An interesting case where this applies to the hero. Lockhart starts out as just an eager beat cop running around crime scenes and getting in the way of his brother-in-law Detective Holt, while ignoring his requests to stop. As the case progresses and Lockhart gets obsessed with the case and being Mistaken For Crazy, he begins haranguing Holt for various forms of support that he never gets.
- Offing the Offspring: Lockhart accidentally kills Rya in 1988, not knowing she's his granddaughter. He only learns this 27 years later, much to his horror.
- Parental Neglect: Lockhart is so obsessed with the killer that he almost misses his daughter's birth, screws up her 9th birthday by working till late into the night (he even makes her help him out at the precinct), and generally makes a mess of their relationship until she's about to have her first kid herself at the age of 27. With her mother out of the picture since her birth, it's left to Lockhart's in-laws to raise his daughter in his stead.
- Police Brutality: The death of the killer and the lack of any follow-up investigation leads Philadelphia's African-American community to believe that this is what happened in 1988.
- Poor Communication Kills: Many times in this movie characters are very ambiguous with each other, leading to a lot of bad events.
- Rank Up: Holt, consistently. He is a detective in 1988, a lieutenant in 1997, a captain in 2006 and retiring as chief of police in 2015. Tommy and Maddox also go from patrolmen to detective after the first Time Skip but then Maddox gets killed and Tommy ends up off the force.
- Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: As he investigates the links between the murder victims, Lock finds that they were all members of the "Real American Movement". They're the ones responsible for launching a second civil war in 2024.
- Room Full of Crazy: In this case, car. By 2015, Lockhart is living out of his car on the New Jersey coast surrounded by his obsession.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: This turns out to Rya's mission-preventing a future civil war by killing people in the past who helped instigate or wage it.
- Shown Their Work: The police cars, radio broadcasts of sports games, and even TV ads are all in line with what would be broadcast in the Delaware Valley in each time period.
- Space Whale Aesop: Focus on your life as you live it, or you'll spend your life chasing a time-traveling serial killer.
- Stable Time Loop:
- Rya eventually tells Lockhart that time travel is a one-way journey, and that nothing he can do will stop what happened in the past.
- A more explicit example is the airplane keys. In 1988, the police find a mysterious set of keys on Rya's corpse. In 1997, Locke learns that they are the keys to a plane at a nearby airfield, which leads him to go there. An earlier version of Rya happens to be hiding out there, and in a bid to escape, she takes the keys to the plane. Thus, the keys only end up in Rya's possession in the first place because they were found on the corpse of her future self.
- Then there's Naveen Rao, and his involvement in Rya's mission. Lockhart's investigation into Rya's killings in 1988 and 1997 is what attracts Rao's attention to Rya and leads him to discover her mission and support it. He thus starts developing the technology that she has used/will use on her mission. Interestingly, however, this is actually an aversion, as the ending shows that Rya was successful and the future has changed, meaning that Rya won't go on her mission and the technology won't be used for that, implying that Rao had developed the technology in a different way in the future. Which makes it more a mix of a paradox and a "Shaggy Dog" Story for Rao himself.
- Time Travel/Set Right What Once Went Wrong: What Lockhart eventually realizes the killer is doing. He's also the one who convinced her to do it.
- Tomato Surprise: Lockhart was the one who told Rya to travel back in time and stop the civil war from starting in the first place.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The Netflix trailer of the film gives away just about every major plot twist in one handy package. If you watch it in full, you can basically save yourself the time of watching the actual movie.
- Walking Spoiler: Any mention of Rya and her goal.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lockhart and Rya both have shades of this, in different styles, and towards different strategies, with both trying to change the past, but Lockhart wanting to change the past by stopping Rya's mission, hoping that will restore his family.
- Western Terrorists: The Real American Movement go several steps beyond being just one right-wing militia of many when they launch simultaneous inner-city bombings that kill a combined 11,000 people and eventually trigger a second American Civil War that would lead to millions more dead.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Nine-year-old Amy, whose Establishing Character Moment is getting up and making breakfast for herself and her dad. On her own birthday.
- You Have to Believe Me!: both Lockhart and Rao have their moments. Averted with Rya, who makes her case more calmly, and with a faint smile, while speaking more persuasively.
