If there is a silver lining to living through interesting times– and that is, admittedly, a monumental “if”– it’s that we tend to get a more interesting strain of arts and entertainment. I don’t necessarily mean “better,” though that tends to be true as well; the uncertainty of the early ‘60s, to use just one brief example, brought us Dr. Strangelove and The Manchurian Candidate and “The Times, They Are A-Changin’” and any number of works which are still cherished and frighteningly relevant today. But even the schlock of these eras– maybe especially the schlock– provides a fascinating snapshot of the national psyche: the grisly torture-porn horror movies that popped up in multiplexes during the War on Terror, for example, or psychotically peppy strain of bubblegum that soundtracked the image-forward nihilism of the Reagan years. While not a great movie, the new astro-thriller I.S.S. is perhaps the clearest expression of today’s doomscrolling anxieties we’ve yet seen in a mainstream Hollywood product, and while it doesn’t quite live up to its promise, it’s a reasonably entertaining night at the movies.
The setting is the International Space Station, that astronomic outpost and floating metaphor for post-Iron Curtain US-Russian amity. Two astronauts (Ariana DeBose, in her first live-action appearance since winning the Oscar for West Side Story, and John Gallagher, Jr.) dock at the station, joining Commander Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina, his rank indicated by his no-nonsense mustache) and a trio of affable, hard-drinking cosmonauts (Costa Ronin, Pilou Asbæk, and Masha Mashkova). Their obligatory isn’t-it-beautiful reverie is interrupted, however, by what appears to be a massive explosion on our pale, blue dot. Radio communication is cut off, but Gordon receives a text transmission confirming the worst: Russia has fired a massive strike at US forces, and he and his fellow astronauts are to claim the station for America by any means necessary. Of course, it doesn’t take them long to realize that their international comrades have almost certainly received the same instructions– and, well, you can imagine where things go from there.
The premise of I.S.S. is so simple and ingenious that I’m almost surprised it hasn’t been done before; one can easily imagine Rod Serling sinking his teeth into it on The Twilight Zone. But then it couldn’t have been made any other time, because we’ve never been in this moment before. The very premise of Americans and Russians working together in space would have been preposterous during the Cold War years, and the film’s distrust and creeping paranoia would have been seen as needlessly reactionary during the uneasy peace which followed. Only now, as Putin’s reign of terror against his political enemies (and queasy bromance with our own would-be dictator) has become impossible to ignore, does this stor. truly work.
I.S.S. is the sort of film which would have benefited greatly from either a much higher budget or a much lower one. With a few million dollars more, it could have leaned into spectacle and Gravity gravitas, overwhelming us with both the enormity of space and the horrors unfolding back home; instead, the earth looks like a particularly ominous weather map, and the anti-gravity lab mice on the station look a little too rubbery and Ratatouille. On the other hand, if the production was more impoverished, the producers might have realized that they couldn’t rely on the special effects at all, and instead focused their efforts on sharpening the screenplay to a razor tip.
From where I sit, the latter would have been preferable. The premise of I.S.S. has the makings of a great drawing room mystery, and could even theoretically work as a stage play; one can almost imagine an interplanetary Hercule Poirot or Benoit Blanc brought in to mediate. The fatal flaw of the I.S.S. script is that it never keeps us guessing. For this sort of story to work, you need to be constantly on your toes, trying to figure out who to trust and who’s lying and who’s secretly cutting off your oxygen supply while claiming to put politics aside. Instead, I.S.S. takes great pains to let us know exactly where everyone stand and who’s doing what at all times (director Gabriela Cowperthwaite is a documentarian by trade, best known for the incendiary Seaworld expose Blackfish, and I wonder if her journalistic expertise isn’t here getting the better of her). By my count, there is only one passage in I.S.S. where the rug is pulled out from us regarding a character’s motivations, and it lasts well under ten minutes. I’ve complained in this space about the proliferation of puzzle-box narratives, but this is a case where a little more trickery would have gone a long way.
Russia may once again be our great political bugbear, but is it still possible to make a great, nervy Cold War thriller? The thing about the Cold War, after all, is that it was cold; the terror that drove those stories was that you never knew what secrets the guy next to you was hiding. Today, everyone is a lot more up front about the awful things they believe and the horrible people they serve– or at least, we expect them to. There’s also a lot less patience for ambiguity; everything is instantly fed into the discourse grinder and converted into Takes. A more nuanced version of I.S.S. could have easily been interpreted in bad faith by any number of sides. The characters here aren’t quite one-dimensional– there’s an intercontinental romance, and the inevitable good guy who cracks up and goes crazy– but it’s seldom left up to chance for us to misinterpret where they stand. You know we’re in a bad place when we’re left longing for the political subtlety of the days of Joe McCarthy.
But perhaps this is too much to lay on I.S.S. This is, at its core, a pulpy little space thriller about good astronauts and bad astronauts, and it’s largely enjoyable on those grounds. The conflict may be predictable, but I can’t say I wasn’t moderately thrilled– and crucially, at barely 90 minutes, it never wears out its welcome. In many ways, this is the kind of movie I wish we saw more of from Hollywood: a lean, original thriller which, while not particularly memorable, keeps you entertained without the empty calories of IP or smirking self-awareness. The thing about I.S.S. is that it’s just good enough that it bothers me that it doesn’t shoot for greatness. But maybe it wasn’t made for me: for future viewers of retro-doom-kitsch, it will be a priceless time capsule.
I.S.S.
2024
dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite
95 min.
Now playing in theaters everywhere (though the Hassle recommends Apple Cinemas Cambridge or your locally owned multiplex)
