Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite | Written by Nick Shafir | 95 min | ▲△△△△ | Amazon Prime
It used to be that if Chris Messina was in a movie it was a pretty safe bet it was a script that has been passed up by six other more interesting actors. Then, last year he showed up in Air and he practically stole the show from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. I made the mistake of underestimating a character actor who, after years of slogging it out in trenches, took his shot with the big boys. He earned a lot of respect there, and his presence in this is a big reason I dialled this movie up on a Friday night on Prime, looking for a decent genre picture to ease me into the weekend.
I didn’t get it — I.S.S. is neither trashy enough to be good time nor good enough to be engaging. Talented documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish), whose first fiction feature was the abysmal Our Friend, has delivered another dud.
The first mistake the filmmakers make is to simulate the interior of the zero-gravity International Space Station with a woozy-cam, all dutch angles and swinging shots within the limited cabin of the station, making it feel like the astronauts are all at sea, bobbing up and down in the surf. It’s queasy-making cinematography, even at home.
And about those astronauts: Three Americans played by Messina, Ariana DeBose, and John Gallagher Jr, and three Russians: Masha Mashkova, Costa Ronin, and the excellent Pilou Asbæk of Borgen fame. When nuclear war breaks out down on the planet, each group gets orders to take control of the station. These are scientists, on both sides, but soon we discover who’s more cold-blooded and who’s willing to make allies with the enemy for a shared cause — a crucible of paranoia.
Despite a promising premise, the script works against the picture’s suspense by introducing stakes in the second act that should’ve been established much earlier on, and the score works against the picture’s suspense by being alternately solemn and goofy rather than intense. We never have a real sense of the geography of the station so claustrophobia isn’t really in play, and neither is the possibility of genuine loneliness — these people could be the last survivors of an apocalypse, but the larger implications of that reality are never explored.
The actors are more adrift than their characters, trying to communicate doubt, fear, and regret while never earning our sympathies. Oscar-winning Ariana DeBose showed real star power in West Side Story, but here she never finds a groove — the movie won’t let her.
The running time is a little more than an hour and a half. When you’ve got something this poorly shot, edited, and simply misguided, short is good.
