The Astronaut (now streaming on Hulu) furthers the notion that few movie-character archetypes get as existential as astronauts. One assumes seeing the vastness of space from orbit makes you feel like one boring little mitochondria floating in a vast primordial soup – or something like that. Kate Mara headlines this sci-fi-rooted horror-thriller, playing a spacewoman who returns to Earth with some problems that might be normal acclimating-to-gravity type stuff, but are almost certainly not normal at all, since most movies aren’t about normal things. The question is where on the astronaut-abnormality spectrum her experience lands.
The Gist: They say it’s Capt. Sam Walker’s (Mara) “first successful mission,” but how “successful” is a mission when HQ loses contact with the vessel, the capsule is mysteriously punctured during reentry and you have to race to retrieve the unconscious pilot? This is the first of many I’m-not-so-sure-about-your-police-work-there-Lou logic lapses in this movie, but hey, as you’re about to learn, at least it’s consistent in that department. Sam wakes up in a hospital bed in quarantine. She looks at the bedside table and a pen levitates off the surface. Curious. The doctor comes in and congratulates her on her “successful” mission, then says Sam is “lucky” to have survived, so now we’re all confused, but maybe we should just move on. Sam brings up the floating pen and the doc explains it away as “antigravity hallucinations.” That makes some sense, almost. It also lays the groundwork for the movie to mercilessly eff with its protagonist and, by extension, its audience.
Thanks to Sam’s Army-general dad William Harris (Laurence Fishburne), she’ll continue her acclimation process in a lovely sprawling home on a beautiful wooded Virginia plot. It has everything: Home gym, jacuzzi, fully stocked kitchen, even a high-end turntable with records. It’s normally used by diplomats, William explains. It also has no neighbors for miles, a trait you’ll recognize from two hundred thousand billion other horror movies: In a mansion in the middle of nowhere, no one can hear you scream.
Sam’s husband (Gabriel Luna) and daughter (Scarlett Holmes) can visit, but not stay, possibly by choice, since her long hours and days spent in space have strained her marriage. In addition to the hallucinations, Sam has headaches, ringing in her ears and an ugly bruisey-rash on her hand, so it makes all kinds of sense when authorities leave her alone in this house. No nurse, no dad, no butler, no robot, no pet gerbil, no nothing. They’ll be back in the morning to run some tests, though. She facetimes with her bestie (Macy Gray), who tells Sam to downplay all her issues or else NASA will never send her back to space. And so we have no choice but to assume Sam has no mind of her own, because she doesn’t question any of this nonsense.
Sam barely gets comfy in this very quiet space when weird shit starts happening, e.g., flickering lights, the wind suddenly dying then just as suddenly whipping back up, strange thumping and gurgling-monster noises, etc. This phenomena prompts her to grab a flashlight and (you may begin groaning now) investigating in the woods and/or walking… very… slowly… through… the… house… and… very… slowly… reaching… for… a… doorknob. She shares some concerns and her dad shows her the secret bunker in the basement, complete with a large array of security monitors and a Jurassic Park mess hall in case anything should want to stalk her in it. Instead of asking doctors about her hand, she looks it up on the internet, because that always makes a person feel assured and not paranoid at all. Of course, all this could just be Sam’s hallucinations. I bet that’s it. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Astronaut is a sloppier Signs (which is already pretty sloppy) crossed with a dumber Arrival with a smidgen of Contact and a few musical cues that sound like somebody asked AI software to compose a score that emulates E.T. without getting anybody sued.
Performance Worth Watching: Well, in lieu of saying less-nice things about the lead’s earnest commitment to a screenplay that doesn’t deserve it, let’s remember some good Kate Mara films: The Martian, Call Jane, Friendship, 127 Hours. And she’ll next be in Werner Herzog’s compellingly titled Bucking Fastard.
Our Take: The Astronaut trots out the usual manipulative screenplay games: Our protag has hallucinations undermining her POV with is-it-real-or-just-in-my-head nonsense, an inability to question the world’s worst advice from a bestie, a proclivity for making stupid decisions, etc. The drama hinges on Sam’s remarkable lack of intelligence and agency. It’s hard to be engrossed in a story when its plot holes gape like the mouth of a hungry, hungry hippo. Contemplating her options within a frightening, tense situation, Sam inevitably makes the choice you’d never make, rendering her a profound moron and you profoundly frustrated. Sam’s either absolutely fearless and unconcerned with her emotional and physical well-being, or is stuck in a screenplay that’s so terrified of being boring, it throws all logic out the porthole to be devoured by the cold unfeeling vacuum of space.
Director/writer Jess Varley skillfully draws out tension in individual sequences and maintains suspense until a big third-act reveal, but she leans too heavily on off-the-rack cliches and builds to a conclusion that aims for profound but ends up being laughably goofy. Essentially a single-location film, The Astronaut functions better as low-budget real estate porn than a paranoid creeper, and its core themes are fuzzy and half-realized: What does it mean to be human? How do you define family? Where’s the line between your true self and the facade you wear for others? I’m really reaching here. These are wisps of notions in a film that takes an astronaut and all her extraordinary experiences and drops her into a rote haunted-house thriller complete with dopey jump scares, weird noises and timely power outages. A lame horror movie by any other name is still a lame horror movie.
Our Call: Send The Astronaut to Alpha Centauri. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
