An astronaut three-year shift at a lunar mine is finally coming to an end, and he’s looking forward to his reunion with his wife and young daughter. Suddenly, he begins to experience strange delusions. A film by Duncan Jones.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is a Lunar Industry employee. His mission is to mine helium-3 from the moon’s surface. He’s been doing this everyday job for nearly three years, working alone with a robotic assistant named GERTY (Kevin Spacey). His contract ends in two weeks, and he will return to Earth to be with his wife and daughter.

However, during his final weeks at the station, strange things begin to happen. He sees visions and people who should not be there. While retrieving canisters of helium-3 from the harvest machine, he crashes his rover and loses consciousness.

Sam Bell awakens in the station’s infirmary, where GERTY informs him that the crash may have caused him to lose some of his memory, which should soon recover.

Despite the company’s strict orders forbidding him from leaving the base until the rescue unit arrives to fix the harvester, Sam attempts to remember what happened but nothing comes to mind. He finally decides to venture out to the harvester, where he makes a startling discovery that proves he is not alone on the moon.

The adage “don’t judge a book by its cover” is certainly apt for the British science-fiction thriller MOON. I initially mistook it for a documentary, but was pleasantly surprised to discover one of the best films in the genre. Sam Rockwell delivers an engrossing and dramatic performance, complemented by sublime production, cinematography, sound, editing, script, and direction.

MOON premiered at Sundance Film Festival on 23 January 2009. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 10 July. A high-resolution, 4K remastered version of the film was released on 16 July 2019 for the tenth anniversary of the film.