The DNA of “Alien” is all over Egor Abramenko’s directorial debut, the Russian Soviet-era horror/sci-fi film “Sputnik.” Fortunately, this offspring of Ridley Scott’s classic is very much its own slick, engaging psychological horror-thriller, anchored by a strong lead performance by Oksana Akinshina.
Based on Abramenko’s short film “The Passenger,” the film, written by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev, imagines what happens after most sci-fi films end. In the “Alien” franchise, Ripley spends most of her energy making sure aliens don’t make their way to Earth. But what happens if one does? How would the Soviet superpower embroiled in a space race handle the situation if they sent two into space and came back with three?
This mystery unfolds from the perspective of Tatiana (Akinshina), a brilliant doctor interested in the field of neuropsychiatry, who has been disciplined for her extreme methods to produce results in her patients. This catches the attention of Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk), a mysterious military man who needs her help with a recently returned amnesiac cosmonaut, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), being held at a research facility in Kazakhstan. What Tatiana finds when she arrives at the facility is a charming cosmonaut, irritated at being held for tests, whose gory secret, buried under layers of bureaucracy, only comes out at night.
With her steely exterior and empathetic superpowers, Tatiana falls into the canon of sci-fi heroines like Ripley, of course, but also Lindsey Brigman in “The Abyss,” Louise Banks in “Arrival,” even with shades of Clarice Starling in “Silence of the Lambs.” Although these are all beloved cinematic heroines, and Akinshina is fantastic carrying and grounding the film as the brave Tatiana, the trope is a bit overdone at this point, and the script does not stray from this rather stereotypical characterization.
However, there is so much to admire about “Sputnik,” with its immersive, eye-catching production design by Marina Slavina and stylish cinematography by Maxim Zhukov (the film was shot on location at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow). It’s the kind of film you can’t look away from, thanks to the lush look and performances, particularly by Akinshina and Fyodorov. The creature design and execution is also particularly impressive.
Everything is so perfectly placed that it’s jarring when Abramenko loses control over the tone, particularly in transitions where tightly wound lab scenes stumble into soaring drone shots soundtracked to an intense yet generic-sounding score, which feels like different films mashed together. The genre swerves from sci-fi to horror to psychological thriller to melodrama, but in a way, it works. It’s clear Abramenko wants to serve a whole full meal of movie, and in stretching the dynamic range of emotion he does hit on moments that are at times operatic or somewhat soapy. But in doing so, brings a new layer of story that makes “Sputnik” feel epic.
That play with genre is what makes this film so compelling. It starts out paying homage to its classical science fiction roots, but goes its own way, layering on melodrama and social and political commentary unique to its Russian setting and history. Yet it’s open-ended enough to be the kind of choose-you-own metaphor that that the best kind of sci-fi always is. Give “Sputnik” a whirl, and it just might take over.
