In space, nobody can you scream, but they might smell you shitting your pants if you’re on the International Space Station.  I’ve heard that place already smells pretty rank, what with all the odors trapped in such a relatively small space.  There is a cast of only six people in 2023 sci-fi thriller I.S.S, which is completely set aboard the titular facility.  Even with a cast that small, the space still feels claustrophobic.

The cast is split evenly between Americans and Russians.  The two latest additions to the crew are both Yanks, as played by Ariana DeBose and John Gallagher, Jr.  When they arrive, we see the Soyuz space capsule they travelled in only has room for two.

Because of that, at least four people will inevitably be stranded up there when it becomes apparent nuclear war has erupted on the surface below.  For now, however, rather odd communications have arrived for U.S. Captain Chris Messina and Russian Costa Ronin, telling each side to seize control of the facility by any means necessary.

Those means quickly become extreme with Ronin and fellow Russian Pilou Asbaek luring Messina on a spacewalk under false pretenses, and then using the station’s giant robotic arm to smack the American into space as if this is a very unfairly balanced game of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.  By the end of the movie two guys will essentially have a cage match to the death, one of them being armed with a giant drill.  How I wish I was making up that last line.

Admittedly, there had been foreshadowing of things potentially going off the rails early on, when one of DeBose’s lab mice is killed by one of Asbaek’s.  Gallagher is almost immediately positioned as the loose screw on the American side, with him literally sleeping with his eyes open. 

There is also an apparent power imbalance between the groups, even when this is supposed to be internationally neutral territory, as it seemed the Russians had more of an obligation to learn English than the Americans felt to learn their language.  Something the film does to build suspense well is to have conversations in untranslated Russian.  I don’t speak that language so, as with a large potion of this film’s potential audience, I could only gauge what was being exchanged based on expressions and body language, while keeping in mind the filmmakers might be deliberately deceiving the viewer.  Alas, the film will eventually even screw this up, with a key conversation held entirely in Russian for the sole purpose of keeping the audience in the dark.

There isn’t much character development, but I liked how Messina and Masha Mashkova had been having what they thought was a clandestine relationship.  That is kinda cute in how naïve that is, thinking you’re keeping the other four in the dark in a place that is, in reality, roughly the length of a football field and which appears even smaller here.

The special effects are good, but I was unable to fully suspend disbelief.  It does a decent job of faking a zero-gravity environment, except I noticed electrical wires in one scene float “down”.  That said, since we are all aware CGI can be used to accomplish anything nowadays, I did not experience any sensation of wonder, but I also didn’t when watching Gravity, which had a far greater budget.  Strangely, I still find 2001 to be the most believable space film, and it makes my brain hurt to think that was released over 50 years ago.

I was also reminded of the lamentable 80’s sequel to that film, where tensions between the U.S. and Russia result in the crews of those nationalities being separated into their own halves of the spaceship.  That felt petty even in the context of the film, but I can imagine that happening on the I.S.S. today with how tense relations are over the war in Ukraine.  That said, I still doubt either country would order a complete takeover of the ship. 

Which leads me to an obvious question: why does each side want full control of this limited real estate in the heavens?  An answer will be provided, though I found it neither satisfactory nor believable.

DeBose fares the best of the cast, and that is likely because her character asks so many questions.  She asks the kinds of questions people in other films tend not to ask, as those would usually result in a much shorter film.  Maybe she could get an answer to one poser I have, and that is whether they really have typical condiment squeeze bottles there, so as to make sandwiches. That doesn’t seem like a great idea, but maybe that’s a real thing.

The other actor to fare the best is Mashkova, though she isn’t given as much to do.  As for the boys in the cast, I believed their performances, but I always sensed something undefinable which prevent me from being fully convinced these are real people.

An irony is that, as I write this essay about I.S.S, we actually have two U.S. astronauts stranded there.  I will never understand why our government decided to essentially outsource our space program to for-profit companies, but these two unfortunately souls went sent up there in a craft by Boeing that has since been deemed unstable and unsuitable.  This morning, a different company’s craft launched in an effort to retrieve them.  I may be an overall believer in free-market capitalism, but you have to give it to the Russians—there’s a reason so many countries rely on them to shuttle people to and from the space station.

Dir: Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Starring Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, John Gallagher Jr., Masha Mashkova, Costa Ronin, Pilou Asbæk (it isn’t every day you can put the entire cast on just more than one line like that)

Watched on Kanopy