Sam (Kate Mara) repeatedly senses that she might be in a movie-like situation, but she’s not exactly sure what kind of movie.
An astronaut recently returned from a space mission via a bumpy landing, Sam is immediately put into quarantine, then relocated to a ridiculously well-appointed house in the forests of Virginia through a joint effort between NASA and the military. There, she can supposedly recuperate (and be subjected to various tests) in peace. She’s promised a real in-person visit with her semi-estranged husband Mark (Gabriel Luna) and their young daughter Izzy (Scarlett Holmes) soon.
Sam initially takes most of this in stride. When she hears that the next building is miles away, she casually muses that it’s like a horror movie. Later on, her father General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne) reveals that the house also has a hidden high-tech bunker with advanced security settings. Like James Bond, Sam remarks. Girl, colder.
Even if Sam herself eventually stops guessing, the process of figuring out what kind of movie The Astronaut is turns out to be the major source of its suspense. Sam has some normal ailments following an extended space trip—potential atrophy; soreness from the aforementioned rough landing, during which her pod was radio silent for a lengthy stretch—as well as some more unusual problems. Bruising that won’t go away, for example.
On this tip, she receives some insanely terrible advice from her ex-astronaut bestie played by, uh, Macy Gray: Don’t tell anyone about the worst of it, because your bosses will use it as a reason to dismiss you from future missions.
Sam, desperate to return to space sooner rather than later for reasons she can’t quite articulate, downplays her problems accordingly. Though she tries to hide it, it’s clear: Something unusual is happening. Whether that will turn out to be fodder for science fiction, body horror, a psychological thriller, or something else remains, if nothing else, interestingly unclear until the film’s final stretch.
In the meantime, writer-director Jess Varley occupies the audience with the suspiciously sleek production design and standard creepy-clicky noises. The movie, in theaters October 17, is too short (barely over 80 minutes when the end credits roll) to fully wear out its hook. But Varley’s limited bag of tricks—the movie cuts from escalating fear to Sam suddenly waking up, unsure if she just passed out or was dreaming, multiple times—makes it increasingly clear that the best vehicle for this story would probably be in an issue of something called Strange Incidents or Tales to Confound.
On that sci-fi anthology level, The Astronaut nearly becomes a neat temporary distraction, with Mara well-cast as the space case willing to roll with a lot of punches until everything gets too weird for her to ignore. But when the movie reaches its big climax, it pushes beyond the limits of its visual-effects budget and, moreover, lands on a final genre touchstone that’s too ridiculously matched with the material to tolerate.
In fact, the finale cribs so directly from such a highly specific (albeit widely beloved) movie that its attempt at emotional resonance dissolves on contact. For this loopy exposition dump, followed by that blatant ripoff, you withheld all of that information? There must have been some larger, loftier reason behind Varley’s first feature. But if the idea was to instill a genuine sense of wonder about the mysteries of the universe, send The Astronaut back into orbit; its mission has not been completed.
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