I.S.S. review: Ariana DeBose’s sci-fi outing fails to achieve liftoff
Despite a promising high-concept premise, this would-be thriller leaves viewers lost in space
Film Reviews I.S.S.
Ever since Georges Méliès sent audiences out of orbit in 1902 with A Trip To The Moon, filmmakers have been busy crafting distinctly textured space-themed stories, ranging from tender to terrifying. It’s a setting that provides claustrophobic tension and awe-inducing wonder, as well as giving space (pun intended) for drama and characters to flourish. So it’s unfortunate that director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s I.S.S. fails to take full advantage of not just the location, but also its narrative function when building its stakes, smarts, and scares. Set aboard an international space station where six passengers engage in a war for control, the film neglects to include fresh, heady ideas after its interesting premise arises, denying us of any satisfying gravitational pull.
When we first meet nervous Dr. Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose), she and scientist Christian (John Gallagher Jr.) are rocketing into space to join commanding American astronaut Gordon (Chris Messina) and Russian cosmonaut Weronika (Masha Mashkova), Commander Nicholai (Costa Ronin) and science officer Alexey (Pilou Asbæk) on board the International Space Station. They’ll be cohabitating in this far-off facility, leading the charge for research in medicine and technology. It’s a dream environment for some, although Kira and Christian are both concerned about their isolated situation and uneasy alliance with those already on board. And, as it turns out, they have every right to be.
After their initial honeymoon period, getting to know the layout of the vessel as well as each team member’s eccentric quirks and hot-button issues, they spot a nuclear war erupting on Earth. This wipes out both Russian and U.S. communications systems, leaving both sides with a final message: a directive to seize control of the station by any means necessary. Making matters worse, an electromagnetic pulse decimates their electricity, causing the I.S.S. to lose altitude and risk falling from the sky. A battle to gain the upper hand ensues, involving everything from deceit to murder, with Kira caught in the middle, unsure what to do and who to believe is on her side.
If audiences expect they’ll see heated arguments between the characters as they ponder and strategically debate their best chances for survival, they’d better think again. It’s a genuine disappointment that Cowperthwaite and screenwriter Nick Shafir instead gift us with a rote, reductive story where people are picked off one by one (and, to hurry the proceedings along, two at once). Characters choose to either trust or betray each other on careless whims and there’s little to no growth developed over the film’s thankfully brief run time. These trained astronauts, who we assume were adequately prepped for every nightmare scenario before being sent to space, begin making one dumb decision after another. It stretches credulity, as well as our patience.
Gordon’s rookie mistake not securing his safety harness while fixing a broken antenna outside the ship leads to a tense and memorable (albeit not original) sequence. But it’s hard to buy given what we know about this cautious character. His assumed death, basically written off with a shrug by these quick-thinking minds, is bafflingly believed. When suspicions begin to arise, as they usually do in thrillers of this ilk, we’re already 20 steps ahead. By the third act, it’s absolute nonsense that’s unspooling. Women support women, until they conveniently don’t. Plus, there’s a whole cringey callback involving a chintzy trinket Christian gives Kira that’s essentially Chekov’s Gift Shop Purchase.
Kira’s motivations exasperatingly flip-flop and it becomes tough to stay tethered to her quest. Cowperthwaite, a documentarian who’s directed a fictional female-forward feature before and kept hyper-focused on the feminine arc in Megan Leavey, experiences difficulty keeping a steady eye on her protagonist’s struggles and psyche. It’s hard to get a read on what the faux-hawked feminist is thinking, since she panics easily and lacks logical reactions to the escalating madness which, again, makes us question how she passed the psychological testing phase of her training.
DeBose—a radiant, charismatic actress—elevates the role as much as the material allows, bringing an open-hearted vulnerability to her queer heroine. However, there’s a distinct dullness to Kira’s construction, a one-dimensionality that falters when digging beneath her surface for what informs and motivates her. Sadly, capable supporting actors like Messina, Asbæk, and Gallagher, are also dealt similar slights, where we’re not given reasons to genuinely care about their characters.
The film’s aesthetics fare better than the drama on display. Camerawork simulating zero gravity looks and feels immersive. Anne Nikitin’s score does a lot of the heavy lifting delivering moody atmosphere to the picture. Her compositions, utilizing prickly symphonic strings and dark, foreboding instruments, perfectly underscore threats, sorrow, and menace. Cinematographer Nick Remy Matthews pulls hints of inspiration from Alien’s lighting cues. Visual effects are gorgeously styled and clean-lined, providing a backdrop filled with brutality and beauty.
After the first act, it’s impossible to believe that these uber-intelligent spacefarers, who see their countries engaged in fiery nuclear warfare, can’t realize their directives are worthless as there’s no home or government to which they can return—and that’s if they even survive the perilous escape. Their obvious objective, apparent to everyone except them, should be to work together to make it out alive. Yet the filmmakers fight against this co-existence, in defiance of the characters they’ve established. As the aforementioned Alien’s tagline reads, “In space no one can hear you scream”—but maybe the I.S.S. filmmakers will hear the audience scream out of pure frustration.
I.S.S. opens in theaters on January 19
50 Comments
Damn was this adapted from a script written in 1984 or something?
Yes, how distant indeed the prospect of conflict between the United States and Russia seems now.
Considering Russia can’t even establish real air superiority over one of their neighboring countries, I don’t see any direct conflict between the US and Russia lasting very long at all. Regardless, neither side would give 2 shits about their astronauts taking over the ISS considering it has exactly 0 military value…unless there’s a Rod of God system attached to it that nobody talks about.
Also the odds of their nukes even working are very, very low. They haven’t been maintained for 20+ years now. Russia has been a paper tiger for a long, long time. I’m reading a collection of Heinlein essays and it’s kind of amazing looking back at how strong we thought Russia was in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, hindsight being 20/20 and all.
Odds of Russia attacking the US are somewhere between 0 and not gonna happen. Hell, they try to attack Eastern Europe and they’ll get their shit pushed in so hard that Moscow will be a crater, no nukes needed.
That may be, but for the purposes of this movie it appears to be presumed that their missiles work, which isn’t a big stretch in order to get the plot rolling. A shame it sounds like it isn’t any good.
The rest of the plot sounds like nonsense too though. If nukes are flying nobody is going to give a shit about 6 people and 33k cubic feet of tin can in orbit.An interesting plot would be how those people from different nationalities work together to get back to Earth after a nuclear exchange.
Agreed there.
… but why would you? even a limited nuclear exchange means nuclear winter. the war depicted in the trailer means slow planetary death for sure. better to just airlock yourself.
Agreed. The ISS always has one or more crew delivery craft docked while onboard, either the Russian Soyuz or the SpaceX Crew Dragon. In the case of emergency both can be used as return vehicles BUT they need coordination with the ground, which would obviously be impossible in this scenario, making for great tension. The Soyuz can do ground landings and is programmed to land in the Kazakhstan deserts. The Crew Dragon can only do ocean landings and requires ships to pick up the capsule. Either scenario, without ground support, is pretty nightmarish as opposed the silly premise of astronauts deciding it makes more sense to try and kill each other.
It was grimly amusing to discover than many of the Soviet missile silos were wooden props built to make the U.S. think they had more missiles than they did. It would only take a small percentage of their arsenal to take out a much of U.S. cities, but even in a Putin in the Bunker scenario I don’t see anyone else is Russia lining up to launch nuclear weapons at us. They’re far too comfortable grifting off the Russian natural resources economy.
And that they’d circle their aircraft over the military parades to make it seem like they had many times the numbers that they actually did. One of the best bluffs in history.
“You must secure the ISS. Not for any strategic reason, we just want to get in one last act of pettiness.”
Maybe Trump’s president, “don’t worry America, we’ve got the big beautiful space station, so we won.”
Ironic you would pick that year: that’s the release year of the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010. In it, a worsening Cold War on Earth results in orders from the films’ US and Soviet governments to the astronauts and cosmonauts flying near Jupiter to stop working together… which they follow for like a day before realizing it’s stupid as hell, then telling their respective bosses to go fuck themselves so they can keep doing the mission and survive.This film is literally more stupid and jingoistic than an ACTUAL space film released in 1984.
I didn’t look up the year that 2010 was released but it was the movie I was thinking about when realizing how stupid this concept is, can’t believe I nailed that one without even looking!
This wipes out both Russian and U.S. communications systems, leaving both sides with a final message: a directive to seize control of the station by any means necessary. What? Why? Why would either country care about who controls the ISS at that point? That’s a silly premise to begin with.
My initial thought exactly. It’s not like one side would have been able to hide some sort of weapons system on ISS, and even less likely the U.S. and Russia would have jointly developed something. Maybe the intent is to use it for communications purposes if satellites had been disabled? Anyway…thin.
The ISS relies on the TDRS geosynchronous satellite network for communication. If those were somehow taken out it has high gain VHF antennas that allow voice communication, but only to someone listening on a radio in an area below it. It’s in a fast circular orbit, 93 minutes per orbit, and for much of the year it’s not even over the US. It’s got pretty limited communication value. And, agreed, weapons being on it is an impossibility. It’s quite small and and many countries send their astronauts there, not just the US and Russia. There’d be no way to keep that secret and it would make no sense to begin with. Not to mention it relies on resupplies of fuel, food, water and air every three months. Without that the astronauts aren’t going to last that long anyway. When the Progess 44 supply ship blew up NASA calculated that 6 astronauts would have about 3 months of food. I forget when the last resupply was but, either way, a full crew wouldn’t have that long. Arguably more important is fuel. The ISS regularly expends fuel to do boost jumps to maintain orbit and that’s actually controlled from the ground. If ground control was wiped out it’s not clear that the ISS crew could even maintain orbit on their own. Even if they could fuel would last around 6 months tops before the ISS comes plummeting through the atmosphere and breaks up.
So what you’re saying is that the filmmakers did their homework.
There are literally thousands of satellites……so, no.
Seeing how modern governments act from the Cold War on, it’s not silly in the least. One last dick measuring contest while the world burns.
The ISS, and the US in turn, has been dependent on Russian launches to get to the ISS and resupply it from the start. There’s more options now but most resupply missions are still Russian, even with everything going on. The ISS has been free from nationalism no matter how bad it’s gotten on the ground. It would also serve no military/strategic purpose, so trying to take it over “at all costs” is silly. Without ground resupplies it would last maybe 6 months since the last resupply.
“This is vital: high command left a whole bunch of porn on the station’s hard drive. Really weird shit. You must delete it at all costs. If aliens one day make contact and find the ISS, we don’t want that to be the last record of humanity.”
It’s not just confusing, I find it contemptuous, both in its respect for the ISS’ mission and the people who work on it, and in that I have contempt for it. Heck, back in the ACTUAL Cold War, the film of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 showed basically what would really happen: the American and Russian scientists AND officers would find the worsening political situation back home and orders based on it ultimately frustrating, stupid, and antithetical to their survival and the mission, and they’d ignore them.These people literally are ABOVE it all, with all the perspective shifting that requires both philosophically and in terms of the discipline required for daily self-preservation, yet this movie pretends these scientists would care more about the last wills and testaments of their respective political appointee bosses? Like… for real? What nihilistic jingoist nonsense.
…the film of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010 showed basically what would really happen…You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? And thanks for mentioning 2010; it was what I first thought of on reading the premise of this new film, and it’s long been one of my favourites, a so much more human film than 2001. I think because of the huge reputation of 2001, 2010 often gets unfairly overlooked for the decent little peril in space film that it is. Still retaining a sliver of optimism I’d like to see the other two books in the series adapted for film too.
Exactly. The ISS is a scientific laboratory. One of the requirements to be a NASA astronaut these days is at least a masters in a STEM field plus 2 years of experience in said field post-degree or at least 1,000 hours pilot-in-command time on jet aircraft. Also, rather importantly, astronauts aren’t military. They have no obligation to follow military orders even if they were to ever get one. Other countries have differing requirements and jurisdictions but they are similarly highly intelligent, competent people. If the premise if this movie somehow arose the only thing the crew would be doing is figuring out how long they have and how to get home. They sure as hell wouldn’t be trying to kill each other
Just saw the movie today, and there is a decent enough plot reason why both sides want control of the station, and it’s not a military reason. I’m not sure if you’d find it any more convincing, but I didn’t have much trouble buying into it.Honestly, this review got a number of key details wrong, including that the EMP didn’t knock the ISS off course, but just knocked out communications so they couldn’t request a course correction, and more than one plot beat was missed due to inattention or disinterest. It’s not the best movie, but it’s not trying to be a much more than a simple stuck in space thriller, and it’s a lot better than this review lets on.
Damn. D+. NGL I was stoked when I saw the trailer. Folks seem hung up on “c’mon, who’s really scared of Russia nowadays, especially in space?” But setting geopolitics aside, the basic premise: a present or near-future hard sci-fi where a handful of characters are trapped in a claustrophobic, paranoid setting possibly trying to kill each other… feels like this could have been a white-knuckle classic in the right hands.
I saw the trailer and thought it might be a fun series. Then I saw it was a movie and kinda lost all interest. A space fiction with no sci-fi elements, set on a real space station, seems like a tough needle to thread.
As reductive as this movie sounds… this review is chock full of spoilers.
I was initially excited for this. Then I saw it was releasing in January.
Making matters worse, an electromagnetic pulse decimates their electricity, causing the I.S.S. to lose altitude and risk falling from the sky. Huh?
They lose 1/10 of their electricity.
They lose 1/10 of their electricity.
A screenwriter tells us they have no clue what keeps something in orbit without saying they have no clue what keeps something in orbit.
The ISS loses about 100m/day in altitude and requires monthly reboosts. That’s why most of the weight of the quarterly resupply missions are fuel. These boosts are also controlled from the ground, not on the station. Without resupply the ISS would maybe last 6 months before descending into the atmosphere and burning up.
The ISS does require periodic boosting via thrusters to maintain its low orbit, but not daily. In theory if an EMP blew out the controls, the ISS would eventually lose orbit. But not quickly.
It boosts about every 30 days due to being in Low Earth Orbit. Without the every 3 month fuel resupplies it would last around 6 months, since the last resupply, before catastrophically entering the atmosphere.
Yes, but does she try to sing in it?
In space, no one can hear you sing.
The nuclear war was actually started by people arguing over whether the Emmys should apologise for that joke.
I want to know if she “did the thing”
::Americans land safely at the end of the movie::Yay! We made it!::hatch opens, unveiling the burning hellscape that remains of Earth::Oh fu—::slam cut to credits, Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking On Sunshine” plays::
This was one of those weird situations where two movies with a similar premise were announced around the same time. “I.S.S.” was a script on the black list in 2020 and was greenlit in Jan. 2021, but the movie “Retrograde” was greenlit a few months before it, in mid 2020 after the script made the rounds in 2019. Unfortunately, there haven’t been any public updates on that project since. Would be interesting to see how it might have handled the story differently! https://deadline.com/2020/07/jeremy-rush-to-helm-space-thriller-retrograde-for-nine-days-producers-mandalay-pictures-juniper-productions-1202979510/ That movie’s premise: The story, set after a nuclear war has erupted between the U.S. and Russia, follows six astronauts aboard the International Space Station who are ordered to seize control of the facility from their foreign colleagues by any means necessary.
No offence is intended to the writer of this review, but reading this ridiculous synopsis and seeing the letter grade makes me wish this was the old AV Club and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky had reviewed this thing. He’d have torn it several new orifices.
“I.S.S. sucks A.S.S.”
You mean you’d read a review written by a RUSSKI?! /s
Purportedly smart and trained people being stupid in space always infuriates me. Another one that had the same problem was Europa Report, which some people seemed to like. Again, astronauts doing stupid things to meet the goal of the plot rather than acting like professionals.
It’s so funny how retarded the writer of this article must be to find the plot of this movie to be “high concept.”
Of Course, the main character has to be a lesbian. Because….
Given that the station is going to burn up soon, dies it matter who “controls it”?