Thriller Thursdays: Stowaway – A Survival Story in Space

Intro: In our weekly column, Thriller Thursdays, we recommend specially-curated thrillers that’ll send a familiar chill down your spine.

The take-off of the spaceship is not smooth. The crew seems to be at the mercy of technology rather than being on top of it. As the rocket builds enough power to take the ship into orbit beyond gravitational pull, the intense jolts could rip off one's head from their torso. And a few seconds later, there is a relief -- the launch is successful.

Stowaway’s first few minutes give us a glimpse into the enormity of what could transpire in the next 100 minutes of the movie.

A small team takes off on a two-year trip to Mars in MTS-42. Toni Collette is the redoubtable and dependable Marina Barnett, the ship’s commander, who is making her third trip to Mars. Anna Kendrick plays Zoe Levenson, an effervescent young girl who is the mission’s medical researcher and going to space for the first time. Daniel Dae Kim is biologist David Kim. All experts, all humans.

The directorial choice of damping out people’s conversations on Earth and concentrating solely on the voices of the ship’s inmates gives us a sense of isolation. But after a point, it is just the three of them.

However, things take a turn when they discover an unconscious man in the ship’s innards. He comes crashing down from the ceiling of a capsule, breaking Marina’s left arm as she desperately tries to hold him from falling. His name is Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson) and he is a launch crew engineer. Somehow, he gets knocked out during final checks, unbeknownst to anyone. And now, he is unwittingly a member of the crew and the ship, hurtling through space. But the consequences of his presence and fall are quite serious. A device that scrubbed carbon dioxide from the air gets destroyed due to Adam's fall. As a result, there would not be enough oxygen for four people in the spaceship.

In another movie, this would have been the beginning of a ruthless fight for survival, laying bare the basest instincts of human beings too enamoured of life to hold onto the facade of basic decencies. But luckily, this is not that film. Director Joe Penna eschews hijinks. Instead, he focuses on the intensity of the personalities, and the things which drive them, all done with the tiniest of strokes.

As the crew debates the options before them and understands from their base station the limitation of alternatives, the film moves into the morality of the situation - the decisions of human beings, the ones which define them for what they are. Because human beings are defined by their response to agonising moral dilemmas of their decisions, however heart-breaking they may be.

The increasing sense of doom in the film comes with the growing claustrophobia of the suddenly dangerous space, which shifts from being life-giving to life-threatening in a rapidly shrinking time period.  And the intense thrill of the thriller comes from the principles which define each member of the crew for what they are. The trio’s scientific temper and logical bent are only portals toward emotional decisions, which could be devastating but are necessary for a larger cause.

The movie spends time asking questions which sear and haunt. What makes a person walk into the darkest tunnel of her decision, knowing it has an opening only on one side, and nothing can take her back to where she started? The answer to this question is what makes this fine movie a character study segued into a thriller.

Trivia:

1. YouTube video blogger astronomy and space enthusiast Scott Manley provided consultations and did orbital mechanics math to make sure the movie setting and plot were as scientifically accurate as possible.
2. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Stowaway holds an approval rating of 77% based on 101 reviews. The site's critics' consensus reads "Pacing problems prevent Stowaway from fully engaging, but it's distinguished by its thoughtful, well-acted approach to a story built on an excruciating moral dilemma."
3. The set of the spaceship can be experienced as part of the film tour in Bavaria Filmstadt, south of Munich.

Watch Stowaway here.

(Views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of OTTplay)

(Written by Sunil Bhandari, a published poet and host of the podcast ‘Uncut Poetry’)