Boldly going where no one has gone before, the crew of the spacecraft in “Sputnik” is bound for new terrain. Surprise! Things don’t go as planned. The ship shakes violently and hurtles toward Earth. Something slimy and creepy is crawling outside the escape pod. If you have seen a lot of alien movies, you know what’s next: scares, blood, flashing red lights, and a heroine who somehow adapts quicker than the aliens.
Directed by Egor Abrameko from a script by Oleg Malovicho and Andrei Zolotarev, the movie is set in 1983 and dramatizes what happens after most alien movies end. In “Alien,” Ripley spends two hours preventing extraterrestrials from coming to earth. But what if one made it? What would it want? What would it eat? How would we handle it?
Banishing showy effects and jump scares, the Russian director Abrameko shapes a number of cliches—from the space crash to alien experiments—into a fresh take on the fall of the Soviet Union. The story unfolds from the perspective of Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina), a neuropsychologist who catches the attention of a steely-eyed general, Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk). He offers her a job at a medical facility, where she evaluates Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodav), the sole survivor of the crash.
It sounds like a trap—and it is. And not just because the facility is a prison. No, it’s a trap because Konstantin has an alien festering inside his body. At night, the creature exits the host’s mouth like puke, then unfolds into a four-foot-tall wad of flesh, with two massive arms and hundreds of sharp little teeth. The creature design is scary and illustrates how a single body can separate into two entities, giving “Sputnik” an allegorical feel. (The USSR would fall, from division, just three years later).
Tatyana’s goal is to separate the alien from its host. Like Louise Banks in “Arrival,” her job is not to kill it, but to communicate with it, to understand what it wants, how it works, and whether or not it can survive without Konstantin’s body. Unlike that film, Abremeko can’t wait to crank up the tension, mainly between Tatyana and Semiradov, who tries to weaponize the creature.
The film is at its best when it settles into being a psychological thriller, as unfolding events confirm one theory of what is happening until a counter-fact comes along to confuse things. “Sputnik” is constantly keeping us in the dark, using deep shadows, cement hallways, and crowded labs to create an environment where secrets hide in plain sight. The clues are here, but hidden: in color schemes that shift from reds to blues; in the way Tatyana refers to the USSR as “them” or “they” instead of “us” or “we.”
Yes, “Sputnik” could well be called “Alien in Russia” for its similarities to Ridley Scott’s magnum opus. When the alien escapes its cell, roaming around airlocks, devouring guards, it becomes increasingly hard to not to think of classic, more impressive genre fare. The script even turns Tatyana into the Russian Ripley, someone who kicks ass but also has time to question the meaninglessness of life.
Nevertheless, Akinshina makes good with her heroine, while Abramenko maintains an immersive mood specific to the 1980s Russia, thanks to an intense score and roving cinematography that mimics the slithering beast. “Sputnik” is one of those movies that lodges in you like a parasite. It starts out small, insignificant. Then it grows on you. It grows in you. By the end, it completely takes over. [B-]
“Sputnik” is in select theaters and VOD now.