Another Earth bravely attempts to straddle the line between sci-fi and indie film: A duplicate Earth appears in the skies over our Earth, and we watch as damaged people react to the news that there are copies of them on that other planet. While filmgoers should always encourage this kind of genre-smooshing, Another Earth fails on both sides of the line: It’s a generic indie film that’s way too lazy with its sci-fi trappings.
On the night that the other Earth appears in the sky, a too-drunk-to-drive young woman named Rhoda (Brit Marling, kind of a more wistful Sarah Polley) crashes her car into another car, killing an entire family except for the husband (William Mapother, aka that guy from Lost, sublime in his weird-looking, wounded Mapotherness). Rhoda is jailed for manslaughter, and when she is released from prison, her entire life has passed her by. She gets a job as a janitor in a high school and walks around a lot in weirdly beautiful distant shots with a giant Earth looming in the sky. Eventually, through the kind of twisted improbabilities that only happen in indie movies, she becomes a maid for Mapother’s character, who for some reason doesn’t know who she is.
Through what must be a combination of lazy filmmaking and tiny budgets, neither genre has been employed on a satisfactory level. On the indie side, there’s a lot of sad staring at objects in the middle distance, and the plot feels obvious and stagy. On the sci-fi side, there’s no real curiosity to the script: Wouldn’t an Earth-sized planet approaching Earth wreak havoc with tidal patterns? What would the world’s religions do if this kind of an event happened? It would be nice if the screenwriters even hinted at a world beyond these dreary characters—instead, they basically make the other Earth a Giant Indie Film Metaphor. Which basically makes this movie a Huge Fucking Bore. 
Man, that sucks. A whole other Earth to play with, and nobody gives a shit and they sit around acting boring and depressed? Am I an ass for thinking that it’s kind of a bad idea to combine indie with other genres? Because to be honest, this basically sounds like an indie film, not a sci-fi film. Sounds like… pretty much most of the indie films I’ve seen, which isn’t very many, clearly, but enough to know that this basically fits the description.
Really? Do they even play around with the “second Earth” thing beyond having it be some sort of plot device? Where’s all the inter-Earth travel? Where’s the inter-Earth correspondance? Where’s the wanting to hang out with your brand-new twin? Hell, I’d LOVE to meet an alternate me. And they don’t play with this concept at ALL? You’re right, this sounds boring as hell.
Or all the inter-Earth war, or solutions to all environmental problems? “Oh, hey, we needed to mine more uranium in this Colorado but the EPA totally busted our balls, but why don’t we just get it from THAT Colorado!”
You nailed this movie with your review. I saw this at SIFF and it took all of my film festival super-powers to get through it without falling over or busting out laughing. Pisses me off that they used Cinematic Orchestra in the trailer (nowhere in the film) which leads me to think this movie would make a much better 4 minute music video.