SPUTNIK (2020) by Egor Abramenko
A sci-fi creature horror that reveals itself to be more of a quiet thriller, punctuated with bloody moments of monster carnage.
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Sputnik pays homage to the many that came before it. It possesses the dark mystery of Carpenter’s THE THING (1982), the visceral body horror of Scott’s ALIEN (1979) and the ambivalent creature design of Espinosa’s LIFE (2017). Although, it is unique in its elements of Soviet-era bureaucratic deception and its stark but affecting cinematography.
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The effectiveness of this Russian horror debut lies with its foreboding sense of dread and unrelenting seriousness. Whether a product of Russian culture or genre-myopia; Sputnik belies a severe and, therefore, tremblingly tense atmosphere. In the first act, Sputnik tells of the alien monster far more than it shows. Even as the story treaded along somewhat melodramatically, I was gripped and awaiting what I thought was going to be a terrifying climax of death and gore. The suspense paid off, not in a fountain of blood (though there is a fair bit of it), but in a rather less dramatic moral tug-of-war.
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Therein came Sputnik’s other strength: its characters. Led by the maverick female psychiatrist Tatyana, the cast is rounded out with other multi-faceted and genuinely likable characters. None of the characters are truly heroic, nor villainous. They each have believable agendas and intentions. This humanness lends itself to the film’s moral drama and ends up constituting a large part of its narrative purpose.
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Despite these strengths, Sputnik remained rather forgettable. Neither its Russian filmic influence (e.g. slow and contemplative pace reminiscent of Tarkovsky), nor it’s genre-unique plot could save it from coming off as a low-budget ALIEN ripoff, playing at a serious but ultimately unfulfilling moral drama.
