‘Lost in Starlight’ (2025) Netflix Movie Review - Dull Story, Pretty Images

What Lost in Starlight/I Byeol-e Pil-yohan offers is stunning animation. Director Han Ji-won creates splendid images. She uses teardrops to show Earth's reflection and places a large sun in the background when a couple is shown playing together in the water. There is something magical, something free-flowing about her frames. They fill you with awe, but sometimes they also resemble pretty screensavers. You can pause the movie at any moment, take a screenshot, and update your desktop wallpaper. Yet, one cannot call Ji-won's animation soulless. It works effectively in something like Lost in Starlight, where two people from different backgrounds almost instantly fall in love with each other. The boy is a repairman named Jay (Hong Kyung), and the girl is an astronaut named Nan-young (Kim Tae-ri). We not only buy into this feeble and thinly imagined romance but also accept the incredible development that the song Nan-young loves (no one has heard it, and no one knows about it) was composed by Jay. Moreover, the scene where Nan-young and Jay roam the streets of Seoul at night and grow closer to each other is indeed enchanting, capturing the excitement and innocence of young romance.

Where Ji-won fails is in her conception of a story that's not as colorful and creative as her images. It's the dullest thing here. Nan-young is an astronaut who wants to go on the Mars Expedition. She's also the inventor of a life-form detection system. Her mother had been one of the crew members during the second Mars Expedition, and she, along with her colleagues, died on the planet. This information quickly sends an alert to your brain. You instantly predict that Nan-young will go to Mars and will end up in a terrible, life-threatening situation. Well, this is precisely what happens. You also, after seeing Nan-young's father, understand that Jay will use the antenna and the communication device to contact Nan-young during the unfortunate space incident. The job of the script is to make you shed tears, and you see through Han-ji's calculations. It would have been better if Lost in Starlight had paid attention to the work of its characters.

Nan-young develops a machine, and Jay tries to embrace his role as a musician. Her Eureka moment comes with an air of nonchalance, and the effort he puts into composing music is presented casually through montages. The act of creation is rendered trivial. Love is the only feeling that dominates every frame - it saves Nan-young during the climax. But Han-ji's idea of love is soppy; she becomes over-sentimental. But what's worse is that after all the weepy nonsense, no one dies at the end. The mushiness comes across as a red herring. It's the easiest way to attack the hearts of the audience. Maybe next time, Han-ji should decide whether she wants to comfort us or have us grab the tissue paper before painting her canvas. I will be happy if she chooses to stimulate both our hearts and brains.

Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times