A huge blockbuster in its native Russia, Sputnik draws heavily on the Ridley Scott Playbook For Alien-On-The-Loose Movies, but still comes up with a few licks of its own. Egor Abramenko’s debut feature starts as a slow-burn, sinister laboratory flick before devolving into more conventional kill-the-CG-monster antics. The end result is familiar, but there is enough that is fresh within the B-movie thrills to make it worth spending time in yet more dark, empty corridors.
It’s 1983. Cosmonaut Konstantin Veshnyakov (Pyotr Fyodorov) crashes back down to Earth, with a dead co-pilot and amnesia, only to be confined to a secure military facility (the film makes good use of its period Brutalist settings). Enter disgraced psychiatrist Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina), who we first meet in a tribunal for treating an anxious teenage patient by holding his head under the water (“It worked”) and is charged with getting the memories and truth out of the dazed spaceman. It’s here Sputnik springs its first surprise. It becomes clear that Konstantin didn’t come back home alone: he is playing host to a murderous alien parasite (alien parasites are never just passive-aggressive) that only comes out at night to play.
What follows is a blunt but effective thriller that makes up for in interesting ideas (a monster that feeds on cortisol), fun creature design and good gore what it lacks in three-dimensional characters and subtlety (it’s all driven by Oleg Karpachev’s bombastic score). Its attempts to add an emotional core don’t really land but, built around the no-nonsense Akinshina, whose performance has more than a whiff of Ellen Ripley, Sputnik delivers enjoyable genre business.