“The important thing is that we stick together,” jokes Nika (Mashkova), quoting that famous astronaut, Buzz – Lightyear, not Aldrin – as a way to welcome Dr. Kira Foster (DeBose) to the I.S.S., the International Space Station, that symbol of cooperation and scientific collaboration between Russia and the United States. So, of course, as soon as unexpected nuclear war breaks out on the Earth below them the six scientists aboard – three American, three Russian – all turn on each other in paranoia and violence.
It’s not just that space thriller I.S.S. is narratively clumsy, stealing horror tropes to ramp up the pretense of drama in its micro depiction of macro global conflicts. It’s that the script by Nick Shafir (inexplicably on the Black List of great unproduced screenplays) feels like it crawled out of the depths of the Cold War. Every metaphor is not just heavy-handed: It’s a ham hock across the face, like how Kira’s lab rats turn on each other within days of arriving on the station. It’s also infuriatingly jingoistic: The Russian cosmonauts (Mashkova as the affable Nika, Asbæk as the burly Alexey, and Ronin as clearly unreliable Nicholai) are redeemed by how much American culture they have absorbed. Obviously, it’s not all divided simply along national lines, as Nika’s badly hidden love affair with Gordon (Messina) denotes, but then there’s stressed family man Christian (Gallagher Jr.) creating enough chaos by himself. Why can’t they all just get along like they did when they were getting drunk and singing Glasnost anthem “Winds of Change” (which, I swear, really happens)?
Shafir’s script tries, in its own inept way, to carry some message about the futility of mistrust, but when these supposedly intelligent people turn on each other so fast and with such inevitable self-destruction, it’s impossible to engage with or care about them. It also depends on one of my least favorite narrative conceits, that of having the newcomer be more emotionally engaged, and have more solutions, than any of the established proxy family members. Similarly, director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (who invoked raw rage in her SeaWorld documentary Blackfish and jerked so many tears in end-of-life drama Our Friend) pulls off the technical aspects of simulating zero gravity, but seems incapable of creating either a sense of tension or even internal geography. After all, the I.S.S. isn’t that big, and yet there’s no sense of claustrophobia, which one would have thought would be the first prerequisite of a sealed bottle drama like this.
Ultimately, there’s something a little grubby about setting this on the I.S.S. The world is shitty and endangered and war-torn enough already. Don’t politicize one last glimpse of hope glittering in the skies. For a film with such weighty aspirations, I.S.S. lacks gravity.
This article appears in January 19 • 2024.
