'Sputnik' Review: Russian space horror rises above 'Alien' clichés with creepy creature and detailed science
Spoilers for ‘Sputnik’
When a science-fiction horror film has already been compared, by the makers, to Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 science-fiction horror film, ‘Alien’, you tread carefully with your expectations. The synopsis for the Russian film, ‘Sputnik’, says “Due to the tremendous influence of ‘Alien’ on the genre, extraterrestrial malevolence more often than not feels as if it’s been beamed down directly from the Nostromo (the spaceship in Scott’s film). ‘Sputnik’ promises to buck that tradition of pastiche and deliver something fresh to the genre.”
That’s a bold claim. Surprisingly, however, the film lives up to it. In more ways than one, ‘Sputnik’ has much to offer. The film, directed by Egor Abramenko, and written by Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev, is set in the Soviet Union in 1983 -- at the height of Cold War tensions. In the film, a young doctor called Tatiana Yurievna (Oksana Akinshina), who due to her controversial methods, is on the precipice of losing her medical license, is recruited by the military. Tatiana is brought to a secure science research facility run by Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk) to assess a very special case.
Konstantin Sergeyevich (Pyotr Fyodorov), a cosmonaut who survived a mysterious space accident has returned to Earth with a unique condition. At the landing site of spacecraft Orbit-4, it is discovered that the commander is dead and the flight engineer is in a coma. Only the third crew member, Konstantin, has survived, but he has lost his memory.
Very early in the film, the element of horror is revealed. We see that Konstantin carries in his body a parasitic alien that exits the body once a night to feed. And, it feeds on human beings. More specifically, it feeds on cortisol, a steroid hormone that regulates a wide range of processes throughout the body, including metabolism and the immune response. The film pays detailed attention to the science. But we’ll get to that later.
The first sight of this alien species induces gooseflesh. It’s a well-crafted creature, with gelatinous grey skin, multiple eyes (or that's what it looks like), small but lethal mouth, and a trail of slime to the boot. It looks as real as anything on the big screen can and that makes it more terrifying.
In the course of the film, we discover that the alien is not a parasite. Instead, it’s a symbiote and has a special relationship with Konstantin. Both are privy to each other’s thoughts and emotions, even when bodily separated. This is another aspect of the film that makes it excellent in sci-fi terms. Coming back to the science of the film, Tatiana’s solution for helping separate the man from the alien is as simple as it is brilliant. She induces the same symptoms as that of Addison's disease in Konstantin. It’s a disorder in which the adrenal glands don't produce enough hormones, specifically, the adrenal glands produce insufficient amounts of the hormone cortisol and sometimes aldosterone, too.
The lack of cortisol causes the alien to evacuate. But, obviously, the plot takes a turn there. The alien kills many soldiers and injures Colonel Semiradov, as Tatiana and Konstantin escape the facility. But the colonel catches up to them and attempts to kill Tatiana. At that point, Konstantin uses his symbiotic connection with the alien to kill everyone, including the colonel. And realizing that there was really no way to separate them, he kills himself.
The film does a good job of portraying a totalitarian affair in the USSR. But where the film excels in is not going for jump scares, rather telling the story properly. All three lead actors -- Akinshina, Fyodorov, and Bondarchuk -- play their roles convincingly. But it is Fyodorov who shines as the astronaut who has delusions of being a hero, while simultaneously being aware of an alien residing in his body. As a science-fiction horror, ‘Sputnik’ may not be one of a kind, but it is a cut above the run-on-the-mill fare produced by Hollywood too often. And it moves past the ‘Alien’ subgenre.
‘Sputnik’ is available in select theaters and on-demand.