Russia, We Have a Slimy Problem: "Sputnik" nifty, medium-budgeted sci-fi that stands on its own


Sputnik (2020)
114 min.
Release Date: August 14, 2020 (On Demand)

One can try comparing Russian sci-fi horror import “Sputnik” to “Alien” or "Arrival," but it becomes its own special entity. Starting with its title, the word “sputnik” not only stands as the first Soviet Union satellite launched into Earth’s orbit but also notably means “traveling companion” in Russian. Egor Abramenko makes his auspicious directorial debut, proving his command behind the camera with a medium budget to tell a human-focused story and still intensely deliver the icky, gory goods with that traveling companion. Based on his 2017 short film "The Passenger," the film imagines what would happen if the Soviets sent two into space and came back with three. Coolly forbidding with an inner warmth creeping in, “Sputnik” is about classified government secrets as much as it is about an alien monster ripping Russians to shreds.

It’s 1983 during the height of the Cold War when Soviet spacecraft Orbit-4 has crash-landed in the middle of a space mission. With the commander dead and the flight engineer unconscious, cosmonaut Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov) has survived, but he has no memory of the crash and what caused it. Having Konstantin being held in a top-secret government facility, Comrade Semiradov (Fedor Bondarchuk) recruits Moscow doctor Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina) to help assess the amnesia cosmonaut with her controversially unorthodox treatments. What she soon discovers is that her latest patient is a host for a parasitic alien creature that leaves the man’s body every night. Tatiana will need to find a way to control and sever the symbiotic relationship between the extraterrestrial stowaway and Konstantin.

From its creepy opener set in space where the cosmonauts hear something outside their spacecraft, “Sputnik” sucks the viewer in at once, and then lands and stays on Earth (first difference between this and Ridley Scott’s masterpiece). Director Egor Abramenko takes his time in telling this story, but the first time we see this “sputnik” is worth the wait. The gooey, snake-manta ray species crawling out of Konstantin’s mouth, followed by feeding time, is quite a gnarly sight to behold, a testament to effective CGI. Other technical credits are impressive all around, from Maxim Zhukov’s slick, shadowy cinematography to a booming, magnificent music score by Oleg Karpachev that keeps one’s pulse pounding.

Characters are broken up into the standard opposing ideologies: the science-minded group wants to study this unknown species, while the military side would rather weaponize the body-inhabiting organism. And yet, the screenplay by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev is smart to become less about the alien dwarfing mankind than it does about taking over one man who is not as heroic as he deems himself to be. Tatiana Turievna initially makes for a chilly center, but Oksana Akinshina (2002’s “Lilya 4-Ever”) does give her an inner life, and the feelings she begins to have toward Konstantin—and the fact that she feels for the child Konstantin was ashamed to give up to an orphanage to go into space—begin to make her more accessible. Helmed with confidence, “Sputnik” is a nifty genre film that easily separates itself from other indelible sci-fi efforts.

Grade: B

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