With rare exceptions to the rule – usually provided by Steven Spielberg – literature and cinema have generally led us to accept that outer space will only greet mankind with frightening malevolence. And so it is here, but what a cracking if ominous thriller Swedish director Daniel Espinosa has given us. The International Space Station (how many of them are there ‘up’ there anyway?) has taken on board a tiny particle that will provide incontrovertible proof that there is life beyond our own planet. The crew manning the mission ticks all the right representative boxes of gender and race – Jake Gyllenhaal, Miranda North, Olga Dihovichnaya, Ariyon Bakare (black and disabled), Hiroyuki Sanada (the Japanese engineer who has just witnessed the birth of his first child back on Earth) and Ryan Reynolds (a tradie). Their lives are put at risk when the extraterrestrial ‘thing’ that they are nurturing, known as ‘Calvin’, mutates and grows at an alarming rate to be the size of a small but immensely powerful octopus with a really bad attitude. It might already be old hat, but the filming of weightless characters ‘swimming through the air’ of their spacecraft’s realistic, claustrophobic corridors, with double-bolted sliding doors, is brilliantly done, as are the outside shots of ‘walks’ and debris smashing into the station. Gyllenhaal never looks entirely comfortable in the part, but with those hangdog eyes he appears to be thinking that if Matt Damon could handle being stranded on Mars then he can surely come to grips with his bubble helmet. The creature stalking them is a vile creation, and it’s interesting that North’s character should admit that, without any support of logic or rational thinking, she feels ‘pure hate’ for it. The story is absorbing, the tension vice-like and, with a fab ending that you just don’t see coming (I didn’t, at any rate), this is probably the best sci-fi flick since Gravity (2013) – although Espinosa might have tried harder to find a closing song fresher than Norman Greenbaum’s over-used Spirit in the Sky.
Support The Echo
Keeping the community together and the community voice loud and clear is what The Echo is about. More than ever we need your help to keep this voice alive and thriving in the community.
Like all businesses we are struggling to keep food on the table of all our local and hard working journalists, artists, sales, delivery and drudges who keep the news coming out to you both in the newspaper and online. If you can spare a few dollars a week – or maybe more – we would appreciate all the support you are able to give to keep the voice of independent, local journalism alive.
