‘The Astronaut’ Review: Kate Mara and Laurence Fishburne in a Creepy Sci-Fi Thriller That Loses Its Grip

Jess Varley’s solo feature debut, The Astronaut, opens with a propulsive sequence. In an overhead shot of the ocean, a handful of rescue boats race toward a container ship bobbing steadily with the current. Adrenalized music, composed by Jacques Brautbar (Bob Trevino Likes It, Skywalkers: A Love Story), starts to play, establishing a tense atmosphere and high stakes.

When the modest vehicles reach their target, the emergency teams onboard work quickly to retrieve Captain Sam Walker (Kate Mara) from the vessel. She’s a NASA agent who has just returned from her first space mission, and they are trying to save her life after a mysterious force sabotaged her landing. This moment  — with its vertiginous perspective, killer sound design and sweeping music —  is not only finely composed; it also showcases the best elements of an otherwise uneven film. 

The Astronaut (which premiered recently at SXSW) observes Sam in the week after her dramatic earth landing. Her homecoming is met by frenetic excitement and suffocating protocol. Newly earthbound NASA agents must be quarantined and monitored for several days upon their return. Because of the unique nature of Sam’s mission, she’s staying in an elegant high-security bunker discreetly hidden amid acres of lush forest. The home leaves nothing to be desired: Production designer Alan Gilmore fills the space with comforting mid-century modern furniture and sleek amenities. According to Sam’s father, General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne), this is the kind of place reserved for high-profile diplomats and witnesses seeking state protection. 

Each morning, a team of special researchers test Sam’s physical and cognitive functions through a series of different exercises. They want to know if time in space made her different. It has: Sam sees objects floating in the air; suffers intense migraines accompanied by a piercing ringing in her ears; and has started to develop a rash the color of ash on her arm. The astronaut hides her symptoms, though, for fear that she won’t be sent on another mission.

She’s also desperate to see her daughter Izzy (Scarlett Holmes) and reconnect with her husband (Gabriel Luna, giving a strong turn in a slender role), with whom she has a strained relationship. Even Sam’s friend Val (Macy Gray) encourages her to lie. But when strange occurrences begin happening outside of her body, Sam wonders if whatever extraterrestrial life she detected on her mission might have followed her back. 

Varley, who wrote the screenplay in addition to directing, crafts the first half of The Astronaut as a psychological thriller. She relies on familiar beats and tricks of the genre — the jump scares, fake-outs and uneasy sense of foreboding — but the results are no less gripping. The enveloping and heart-racing sound design plays a huge role in Varley’s ability to maximize the tension and anxiety of a scene. At first, Sam thinks she’s simply hallucinating at night when the forest quiets. But then she sees a trail of dirt on her patio and hears crashing sounds where no one has been. Doors open on their own, knobs turn and the automated alarm system goes off. Panic sets in, and Sam unravels. 

Mara is compelling, reflecting the growing psychic pressure on Sam with an increasingly physical performance; Sam becomes jumpier, trembling as she cracks eggs into a bowl for breakfast and coming off cagier during her daily check-ins with the team. Her family begins to notice, and her husband, in particular, becomes worried. During a daytime visit, he witnesses a strange phenomenon involving cicadas that convinces him that Sam isn’t just hallucinating.

With many strong elements, it’s frustrating when The Astronaut fumbles in the final stretch. A central plot point involves adoption (Sam was adopted by her father and she, in turn, adopted her daughter), and in an attempt to integrate this theme within the parameters of a paranormal thriller, Varley makes some deflating choices. A sentimental expository monologue following revelations about the source of Sam’s paranoia introduces a jarring, and rather unwelcome, tonal shift. It’s as if the film ran out of time, and the only way to tie up loose ends was to rely on eleventh-hour flashbacks or characters, like Sam’s father, to explain everything.

This approach broadens The Astronaut’s scope, but raises more questions than the 90-minute runtime has room for. Varley’s grip, her taut observation of nerve-wracking isolation, loosens and the film devolves into a blunt and clichéd consideration of family. The transition is awkward, and more cartoonish than moving, as the performers try to regain their footing. The Astronaut ends up feeling like a different film, its menacing beginning setting it up for more than these benign conclusions.