Review: Sputnik

Image courtesy of IFC Midnight.

The Russian film "Sputnik," which was obviously inspired by "Alien" and dozens of other extraterrestrials-among-us thrillers, is amusing enough for a movie that wears its influences so blatantly on its sleeve, and it's the type of picture in which the outcome seems pretty obvious from the outset. But what often elevates it is the fact that it's character driven, rather than focusing solely on special effects, although there are some gory examples of those too.

Set in 1983, the film opens with two Russian cosmonauts in space who believe they hear a strange sound outside of their ship. Shortly thereafter, they land back on Earth - one of them is dead and the other, Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), is being kept in isolation. A doctor named Tatiana (Oksana Akinshina) is brought in to survey the cosmonaut after going through a hearing in which she is criticized for saving a young boy by somewhat dangerous methods. The creepy colonel in charge of her new gig - Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) - is impressed with the fact that she saved the boy, regardless of the circumstances.

Tatiana senses that something is off with Konstantin - and the nature of his quarantine - but little does she know. She soon finds out that his body has been inhabited by an alien creature that crawls out through his mouth at night and feeds on the convicts that Tatiana is shocked to discover are being fed to the creature by Semiradov. Tatiana tries to weigh whether she should get involved in the project - on the one hand, she is outraged to find out that men are being sacrificed, while on the other she doesn't want to leave Konstantin - who might have a secret or two of his own - in Semiradov's hands.

When the film is focusing on the characters - as it does for a decent amount of its running time - it makes for pretty interesting viewing. Most sci-fi horror movies of this type are satisfied with introducing a few archetypal characters and then watching them get bumped off by the creature. In this case, Tatiana and Konstantin's debates over the ethics involved in handling the scenario are the film's most compelling sequences, whereas the gory special effects scenes near the film's end are merely the cherry on top.

That being said, "Sputnik" doesn't venture anywhere you wouldn't expect it to in terms of storytelling. It's a pretty standard "Alien" knockoff, albeit one that's set primarily on Earth. It's never hard to guess where the film is going, and the few plot twists it provides don't move the story forward in a manner that necessarily make it any more compelling.

In other words, it's not bad - but not great. Akinshina provides a solid performance as the conflicted scientist, and the film's gloomy, overcast visuals do a nice job of setting the mood and tone. But "Sputnik" ultimately culminates as a gory showdown between some government heavies and the insect-looking alien that pops out of Konstantin's mouth now and then. The film is decent enough for a genre picture of this type, but it's nowhere near as good as the iconic film - "Alien" - that it emulates.