In 2018, Steven Spielberg took to SXSW with “Ready Player One,” a movie entirely built around offering homage and worship to the kind of ’80s movies Spielberg helped popularize. Needless to say, the movie wasn’t very good. Now, director Jess Varley is trying to make that a trend with the SXSW premiere of “The Astronaut,” a movie that references “Jurassic Park,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and even “E.T.” while telling a psychological thriller about an astronaut going back home. Unfortunately, just like Spielberg couldn’t save “Ready Player One” even with Gundam-sized references, Varley’s homages and nods can’t help save “The Astronaut” from a sudden tonal shift that takes away what makes the first half of the film interesting and brings it into redundant — and honestly, quite baffling — territory.
Kate Mara stars as Sam Walker, an astronaut returning home from her very first mission in space. Because her reentry was more than a bit bumpy (meaning she almost died after being hit by some mysterious object or force before splashdown), Sam is confined to a high security house for medical testing and rehabilitation. All she wants to do is see her husband Mark (Gabriel Luna) and adopted daughter Izzy (Scarlet Holmes), but even if her father, General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne) visits more often on official government business, she is as isolated back on Earth as she was in space. The security house is on a massive yet secluded property in the woods, the space can easily house an entire NASA team, and that’s before Sam learns of the elaborate underground facility just a secret bookshelf away, where she can hide in case the house enters lockdown during an emergency or an intrusion.
The first half of the film (a rather short watch at around 80 minutes plus lots of credits) plays a bit muted on the horror, playing more like a psychological thriller focusing on Sam’s isolation and the paranoia of being back on Earth. The use of symptoms related to astronauts reacclimating to Earth as a way to explore Sam believing there are strange things happening in the facility is clever (the filmmakers consulted a real-life astronaut on the effects of coming back down and the process of reacclimation), as most of the first half of the film plays as if it was entirely possible this is just a normal process that will eventually go away, not really weird or strange at all — even if the bruises on Sam’s arm that somehow keep expanding throughout her body indicate otherwise.
Things change when Sam starts seeing what looks to be massive, strange creatures around the property — though they don’t show up on any security camera. Mara does an effective job in portraying the increase in fear as more and more strange things happen around the house and it becomes clear she is not alone. Problem is, she can’t exactly talk to anyone about this as she is resisting her symptoms and hiding sightings for fear she won’t be allowed to go back to space. This makes the first half of the film tense, and an interesting introspection of the character’s psyche in a haunted house-style situation — the true nature of which takes a while to become clear.
Though the first half of “The Astronaut” evokes movies like Duncan Jones’ “Moon,” the movie becomes something more akin to “Sputnik” only not anywhere near that good. Varley uses the location of the safe house and the surrounding woods to build some effective set pieces, but in the last 15 minutes or so, the movie takes a wild tonal shift that seems to abandon every threat it introduced. There’s an idea of multiracial households and adoptive families that the film seemingly tries to offer profundities on, yet it fails to actually arrive at any conclusion. Instead, the theme is seemingly used to recreate scenes from “E.T.” but with visual effects closer to something like “Mac and Me” — ambitiously bonkers, but ultimately empty. Even when “The Astronaut” does a homage to “Jurassic Park” and fully recreates the kitchen scene, it comes across as an empty nod, a reminder of better movies that actually have something to say.
Grade: D
“The Astronaut” premiered at SXSW 2025. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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