Movies that trap a small group of people together in confined quarters, then force them to turn on each other because of some god-awful life or death situation are quantifiably friggin’ great. They just are. Think about the very essence of 1982’s The Thing. (“Nobody trusts anybody now and we’re all very tired.”) Consider 1979’s Alien, with its invisible murder-parasites and backstabbing secret androids. Ponder all of the magnificent, close-proximity paranoia of 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Space Brawls, Flying Mice and a Zero-Gravity Cold War? Enjoy a Twisty Ride on ‘I.S.S.’
Ariana DeBose in ‘I.S.S.’ (Bleecker Street)
If, like me, you enjoy watching humans losing trust in those they’re cohabiting with and spiraling into violence, you’re going to get a kick out of the new thriller I.S.S. The I.S.S. in the title, of course, refers to the International Space Station. The Earth-orbiting base stands, opening titles emphasize, as a “symbol of United States and Russian collaboration after the Cold War.” That is until World War III breaks out on Earth (with no warning whatsoever!) and a team of three American astronauts is tasked with taking the I.S.S. back “by any means necessary.” Escalating the situation is the fact that the three Russian cosmonauts on board have received the exact same instructions from Moscow. And they were all just singing “Wind of Change” by Scorpions together, like, five minutes ago! D’oh!
So who’s on board and frantically trying to stab each other in the back? On the American side, there’s Kira Foster (West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose), a woman who’s married to her work, baby-talks to the mice she’s experimenting on, and happens to leave Earth the very same day the nuclear bombs start detonating. (How lucky!) Her colleagues are hardworking and affable Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina from The Mindy Project) and Christian Campbell (John Gallagher Jr.), a man whose entire personality appears to be “I have two daughters.” (Gallagher Jr., you might recall, was in both 10 Cloverfield Lane and Underwater, thereby making him somewhat of a specialist in crises-in-close-quarters scenarios. I would strongly advise against ever getting into an elevator with this dude.)
On the Russian side is Nicholai Pulov (Costa Ronin from The Americans), Alexey Pulov (Pilou Asbæk from Game of Thrones) and Nika Vetrov (Masha Mashkova from … Russian things). Nika is having a sweet space romance with Gordon, which I assume in real life would be terribly annoying for everyone else living in this tin can, but in movie-land makes the onboard alliances a little more complicated, so yay!
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The joy of I.S.S. is never quite being sure who’s telling the truth and who’s up to no good, so I’m not going to discuss the course of events here in any more detail. What I will say is that I.S.S. does everything you want a space thriller to do. Does someone leave the station to fix something and end up in a precarious situation out in space? Of course! Are there a couple of zero-gravity brawls that are a little bit unintentionally funny? Yes! Is there a secret science project on board that might save humanity? Maybe, maybe not. You’ll have to wait and see. There are even floating mice. (And no one has ever even asked for floating mice in a movie, so that’s pretty cool.)
If there is a sensible lesson or moral to be gleaned from I.S.S., it’s that war can turn literally anywhere into a battleground and anyone into a killer — even nerdy cosmos boffins. But I.S.S. is best enjoyed for what it is: A claustrophobic creeper of a movie designed to be its own wacky little roller coaster — a bunch of jarring twists and turns peppered with some nice views, basically.
In order to fully enjoy I.S.S. on that basis, it is absolutely necessary to never, not once, even for a moment, think about how preposterous a setup it is that America and Russia would suddenly start flinging nuclear devices at one another without any tensions escalating beforehand. The concept is a stretch, at best. Don’t let that spoil the fun. I.S.S. is 95 minutes of pure, escapist amusement and floaty hijinks. And, let’s be honest, when things are as bleak on Earth as they are right now, a little trip to space — even one in the middle of World War III — is kind of a nice respite.
‘I.S.S.’ is in theaters on Jan. 19, 2024.
