ISS

ISS Side Up

I.S.S
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
USA 2023 (2024 release)
Universal
UK Theatrical Print

ISS is a new sci-fi thriller set aboard the International Space Station of the title. Starting with the tail end of the journey to and, arrival of, a new American researcher to the ISS, the film has only six cast members in its whole running time and is totally set in... and for a couple of sequences, on... the space station of the title (and the shuttle rocket which gets the inhabitants to and from there).

So we have six cast members playing three a piece of both the American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts. There’s Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina and John Gallagher Jr. playing the American crew. And we have Masha Mashkova, Costa Ronin and Pilou Asbæk playing their Russian counterparts. And the two crews seem to get along just fine and friendly (in one case, a little more than friendly, in terms of the captain of the American team and the lady of the Russian crew) until something happens.

So the film has a really strong premise and it’s this... one day not long after her arrival on the ISS, Ariana DeBose’s character spots something which she at first thinks is a volcano erupting on the Earth out of the window. She calls the others to float over to the window with her to look but the light show doesn’t just stop at one ’eruption’ and the crew witness a nuclear war from space. Soon after, the crew realise there is no internet and contact with Earth is lost but, the two commanders of each team get secret communications sent to them independently, saying there is now war between America and Russia and that they have to ‘take control’ of the ISS... by any means necessary.

So that’s the set up and it’s a nicely handled, quite intense and dark piece. As people on each side question their superiors’ orders while certain other members of... well... one team especially, tries to eliminate the other team as quick as he can. Like a lot of movies set in isolated locations where the characters are cut off from any kind of real communication with the outside world, there’s a lot of paranoia in the film and, even with such clearly established sides, switching allegiances to some extent... one of the US crew is clearly affected mentally by the objective of his new mission priority and this manifests in an aggressive and dangerous way (aka, he’s a psycho ready to kill American and Russian alike to reach his goal).

Now there’s good and bad with the film. Something I can tell you is it’s a good, more than competently made movie with an almost unbearable amount of suspense in some sequences. It also has good special effects such as the really well done weightlessness of the crew for most of the scenes (though obviously not as good as Jane Fonda’s anti-gravity striptease at the start of Barbarella, for obvious reasons) and nice moments such as, when wounds are inflicted, floating blood droplets in the air.

The cast of six are all great in this. Not one of them puts a foot wrong in this piece and the ‘villains’ are people you will be happy to see die with everyone having good, on screen chemistry. Ditto on the direction and editing. Gabriela Cowperthwaite turns in a nice looking film which has a certain flair and I imagine, giving the weightlessness and other difficulties of shooting stories set in space, this must have been a hard thing to capture... she acquits herself brilliantly.

And the musical score too, by Anne Nikitin, really adds tension to the piece. I would love to listen to this as a stand alone experience but, alas, at time of writing this review there is no proper CD release (just a stupid download). Granted, it’s maybe mixed in too powerfully in a couple of the early scenes but it certainly injects an extra layer of tension throughout the film and I will have to watch out... or listen out, at least... for this lady on future movies.

Okay... it’s a good film, certainly but... not a great film, alas. I’ve been avoiding the floating elephant in the room thus far and it’s this, I think. I'm pretty sure it’s a writing problem. We have such a strong set up and the movie plays out exactly as you might think such a set up would play out but... does nothing more. There’s no last act element to elevate the emotional stakes any higher than they are at the start of the story and, although there is a certain, open ended resolution to the thing (which has, perhaps, shades of other movies where isolated characters are slowly being whittled down), there’s no real feeling of progression to any of the characters or situations by the end of the movie and so it just feels, I dunno, a bit anticlimactic.

But that’s the only problem I had with it and, like I said, ISS is certainly an entertaining movie with harrowing suspense and tension in some scenes and, definitely some clearly defined antagonists on both crews of the station so, if those are the kind of movies you like, you should still have a pretty good time with this one. Just don’t expect too much from the ending, is my main warning on this one.