The premise for writer/director Jess Varley‘s feature debut instantly intrigues; the mostly single-location sci-fi thriller stars Kate Mara as The Astronaut who may have brought something back with her upon re-entering Earth’s orbit. It’s a concept that Varley mines for psychological tension, playing on the ambiguity of whether the threat is internal or external to drive up the paranoia and fear. Varley’s eventual answer to this looming question audaciously delivers something new, though it struggles to stick its landing.
The Astronaut opens with the rescue of Captain Sam Walker (Mara) at sea, found unconscious in her pod with her helmet’s faceplate shattered and a baseball-sized hole in the side of the spacecraft. Combined with unsettling bruising on her hand, routine re-entry quarantine comes with extra surveillance and concern from her military handlers. Luckily, her father, General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne), works high up in the chain of command at the Pentagon and pulls strings to have Sam wait out her days of isolation and medical testing at a luxurious remote home nestled deep in the woods. However, getting clearance to return home to her family, husband Mark (Gabriel Luna) and daughter Izzy (Scarlett Holmes), and then back to space proves to be difficult when Sam is left alone at night. Strange visions give way to signs that something’s lurking in the woods, something that wants to make contact.
Hallucinations inspired by prolonged time in zero gravity are normal upon re-entry, Sam’s doctor warns, but is it really all in her head?
Varley’s debut excels when dwelling on the ambiguity of Sam’s situation, mining palpable suspense from eerie home invasion sequences- small at first but increasing with alarming regularity and boldness. Abrupt time shifts and cuts to the morning after work against these creepy scenes to position Sam as an unreliable narrator; she’s just been through an ordeal and is lucky to be alive, after all. Helping capture the increasing intensity is the stunning production design and labyrinthine wooded compound, all shot handsomely by Dave Garbett (Evil Dead Rise).
Mara capably navigates the constant influx of emotions of Sam’s eagerness to return to space, her first love, downplaying the erratic symptoms she’s experiencing and the increasingly tangible likelihood that something actually followed her home. Varley’s focus on creating tension and genre stakes, however, leaves little room for The Astronaut‘s supporting players. The brisk runtime truncates a major plot point involving the estrangement between Sam and her husband, one rightfully unhappy about how little dedication she seems to have toward their family, or her life for that matter. Doting and supportive dad William seems meant to reinforce The Astronaut‘s themes of family but isn’t fully realized enough to sell the film’s ultimate destination.
That’s ultimately the make or break point of Varley’s debut; a thrilling climax takes a severe sharp turn away from genre thriller into something else entirely that feels unearned. Teases of full-blown body horror, and horror in general, get abandoned for the sake of sentimentality. While visually arresting, it amounts to little more than a shrug after a breathless build of tension. It’s also clunkily handled, spelling everything out in an almost cheesy way. The idea behind it is a novel one and could’ve worked with more finesse, a slightly longer runtime, and a stronger emphasis on Sam’s relationships. Varely relies too heavily on the score to carry emotion here. As it stands, it’s a solid enough and well-crafted sci-fi thriller that crashes hard just as it begins to really take off.
The Astronaut made its world premiere at SXSW. Release info TBD.
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