Casey Affleck Stars in Serviceable Space Thriller

“In house, nobody can hear you scream… your girlfriend’s title,” could be a great tagline for Slingshot, a psychological sci-fi thriller about an astronaut struggling main romantic withdrawal throughout a voyage to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

Starring Casey Affleck and directed by Mikael Håfström, the movie performs at occasions as each an intimate, low-key riff on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, and a variation of James Grey’s Advert Astra. However it’s finally neither of these motion pictures, opting for plenty of narrative crimson herrings and plot twists as an alternative of celestial wonders or emotional climaxes. The consequence feels extra like a B-grade thriller that’s been elevated by a great solid and a script with some intelligent strikes — which ought to assist Slingshot land easily on streamers after a theatrical launch.

Affleck stars as John, who’s a part of a three-man mission on the Odyssey 1 (shoutout to Kubrick), a long-haul shuttle touring to Titan to find out whether or not the moon’s ample provide of methane fuel may assist fight the local weather disaster. If this doesn’t appear logical and even possible, simply know that Slingshot is much less involved with the fact of interstellar journey, or with what may really be finished with all that methane, than with John’s diminishing psychological state as he journeys additional into the photo voltaic system.

The astronaut appears to have a serious case of the deep house blues, haunted by the recollections of his girlfriend, Zoe (Emily Beecham), whom he met at NASA (although it’s not referred to as NASA right here). She pops up in his desires each time he goes into hibernation, which is principally each different scene. Affleck has by no means been a full of life actor, and the truth that his character is a state of semi-narcolepsy for many of the film fits his model effectively.

Issues get rapidly out of hand when John’s fellow vacationers, the bossy Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne) and the jittery co-pilot Nash (Tomer Capone), start preventing amongst themselves after the ship suffers injury in the course of the flight. Nash is fearful whether or not the titular “slingshot” maneuver — for a proof of how this works, see the Nolan movie — will kill all of them, as an alternative of propelling them from Jupiter to Saturn. However Franks is all about finishing the mission regardless of the dangers concerned.

It’s pretty boilerplate materials, and Håfström frankly appears extra enthusiastic about exploring John’s recollections, nightmares, visions and wavering psyche. Like in his Stephen King adaptation, 1408, a few man who goes loopy in a resort room, the director has a knack for putting unreliable narrators in tight areas that finally spell their doom. In case you put apart all of the house stuff, Slingshot is principally a one-set, one-character thriller that always checks the viewer’s perception in what’s taking place.

Is John heartbroken as a result of he left Zoe again on Earth for a multiyear trek to the far aspect of Saturn, or is he too emotionally withdrawn to care? Is Nash making an attempt to sabotage the mission as a result of he’s additionally utterly unstable, or is he preventing to save lots of their lives? And why is Franks all of a sudden brandishing a pistol to try to restore order on the ship? Even higher query: Who brings a pistol onto an area shuttle?

Initially of the movie, a generic feminine voice — that of the machine — warns John that the medication which induce hibernation can have some unwanted side effects. From then on, the secret appears to be questioning if we’re really witnessing these unwanted side effects or actuality itself. By the point Slingshot strikes into its third act, which throws a serious and un-spoilable twist at us, we’re questioning if something we’re seeing is actually taking place.

It’s sufficient to maintain the viewer guessing till the final shot, and even past that. However it’s additionally skinny ice to face on. If nothing is actual, then why ought to we care if everybody on Odyssey 1 dies or not? And if Slingshot isn’t, in the long run, the story of a shattered romance, what’s it actually about? At its finest, the movie manages to seize the forlornness and desperation John experiences on his lengthy, unusual journey, and Affleck does a great job conveying that tone as he retains waking up and going to sleep, time and again.

Fishburne and Capone (a strong actor who ought to be in additional motion pictures) are additionally sturdy, even when their characters aren’t given ample room to exist exterior John’s inside conflicts. Certainly, there’s one thing altogether claustrophobic about Slingshot, together with a shuttle (designed by Barry Chusid, San Andreas) whose inside appears to be a scaled-down model of the one from 2001: A Area Odyssey. What’s lacking, lastly, is the sense of vastness and fascination such a voyage normally entails. For all of the tens of millions of miles he supposedly travels, John by no means will get out of his personal head, and neither can we.