Jonah Naplan   January 20, 2024

I can imagine infinitely many better versions of the confined thriller “I.S.S.,” a film that relies too much on filmmaking, and too little on characters and the emotions they carry, despite a central bright idea. Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and working from a screenplay by Nick Shafir, “I.S.S.,” which stands for “International Space Station,” does a satisfactory-enough job of transforming the small, liminal spaces of the space-bound orbiter into a pressure cooker as it moves along—at a brisk pace too; just over 90 minutes. But with the brief runtime comes limitations, and “I.S.S.” often feels at a struggle to squeeze everything in, so much so that it leaves us feeling slightly empty and unfulfilled by the end, the obvious result of a promising concept executed with a lack of flair.

It focuses in on three American and three Russian astronauts aboard the I.S.S., who are each conducting different experiments during their stay—Exhibit A being crew newbie Kira Foster (Ariana DeBose), who’s doing tests on mice. Her fellow American coworkers, Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina) and Christian (John Gallagher Jr.) are perfectly welcoming upon her arrival, but there seems to be an uneasy disconnect with the Russian crew members—Alexey (Pilou Asbæk), Nicholai (Costa Ronin), and the only other woman onboard, Weronika (Maria Mashkova). The only time the six truly bond is by gazing together at the big blue ball that is our planet Earth, a land whose people will soon start bombing each other in acts of violent war. When Russia and the United States start duking (and nuking) it out down below, Barrett receives vague but foreboding orders from the U.S. government to seize control of the I.S.S. by any means necessary.

Assuming the Russians received an identical message, the Americans convene, discussing what to do, but any semblance of a plan sure won’t stay secret for long. “I.S.S.” acts as a steaming powder keg for most of its runtime, but whether it ever explodes in a way that feels earned is an entirely separate conversation to be had. The second half is much better than the first, taking each important line of dialogue exchanged earlier on, and using them to provide context and explanation for turmoil, disaster, and tragedy. But each time the movie tries to make us feel something—usually by killing off a sympathetic character, or making them experience excruciating pain and danger—the pathos doesn’t wash, probably because the film doesn’t do a very good job of establishing who these characters are as human beings at the very start.

Clearly inspired by outer space classics like Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and even more modern icons like “Gravity” and “Ad Astra,” “I.S.S.” has the contagious energy of something fully capable of applying itself to a great idea, but it never fully gets there, despite strong, committed performances all around. DeBose is the standout here, packing the biggest emotional wallop of the ensemble. For most of the movie, she’s working in service of being the heroine, in a sort of Ellen Ripley mode, despite the film’s insistence on not revealing anything about her backstory or where she came from, even more so than the other crew members, who could be categorized as “side characters.”

It’s difficult to be invested in both the mental and physical duels of these characters when they all feel at such a large distance away, and the problem proves relevant in the third act that introduces both a character resurrection and a plot twist, neither of which is especially easy to wrap your head around. The movie is often distracted by the technics of the outer space setting—humans floating about the cabin, the low hum of the life support system, the way blood spurts out in floating drops when a character is stabbed—but it’s all captured with the same weightlessness as if the camera, too, is experiencing zero gravity, an obsession that becomes more and more distracting as the tension mounts.

The screenplay is mostly smart, and no line of dialogue feels extraneous, but there’s a frequent feeling that the movie could have benefitted from a chunkier narrative that takes more time and greater care to develop its themes and poses a greater impact when it all concludes. The pacing is consistently efficient in that trapped thriller sort of way, never overstaying its welcome or taking up too much time before jumping into the action, but it’s also bare bones on a different level from its brethren; without opening exposition that introduces the characters we’ll be following for 90 minutes, the movie doesn’t compensate for the shortcoming by letting us know who they are in the face of danger through their desperate actions.

There’s political commentary in juxtaposing the nuclear war of the real world with the personal battles of the crew members, but either this film doesn’t realize that enough to put it front and center or it’s too focused on other things instead. Both can be true. “I.S.S.” is modestly enjoyable in consecutive, fleeting moments which renders it watchable enough, but just like how the crew members of the I.S.S. realize the dangers of the Earth when absorbing it as a whole, looking at the bigger picture exposes its flaws.

Now playing in theaters.