Warning: Gentle Spoilers Forward!
Thoughts-bending cinematic thrillers set within the chilly uncaring vacuum of outer house have been a stable Hollywood staple for years, maybe most evident in director Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Area Odyssey” and its existential posturing throughout an exploratory mission to the Jupiter system.
And maybe not by chance, Odyssey 1 can be the title of the spaceship featured in director Mikael Håfström’s (“The Ceremony,” “1408”) newly launched sci-fi function, “Slingshot,” the place a trio of astronauts certain for the Saturnian moon of Titan experiences uncanny occasions when certainly one of its crew begins hallucinating as a consequence of hibernation medicine that ease the pains of a 1.5-billion-mile expedition.
Bleecker Avenue’s contemplative movie, shot primarily in and round Budapest, Hungary, is a dizzying descent into the quagmire of a person’s insanity as he offers with isolation, paranoia, and nervousness. Grappling with the crumbling partitions of sanity, he tries to take care of lucidity as they shut in on a gravity-assist course correction utilizing Jupiter. Audiences will likely be left guessing as to what constitutes actuality till “Slingshot’s” final scene, which will likely be debated lengthy after the ultimate credit roll.
The Academy Award-winning Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) stars as John, one of many three intrepid astronauts who has left his romantic accomplice Zoe (Emily Beecham) again on Earth whereas he soars across the photo voltaic system on a multi-year mission. His recurring desires flash again to their first encounters and budding romance, however views shift because the film progresses and John begins imagining issues contained in the starship that may or won’t be fully actual.
Becoming a member of Affleck is the always-magnetic Laurence Fishburne, who appears to have a knack for being aboard doomed spacecraft as seen in movies like “Occasion Horizon,” “The Matrix,” and “Passengers.” Right here Fishburne performs Captain Franks, a commanding chief who tries to maintain the crew settled during times of hibernation till they full their whip-like maneuver across the fuel big that may fling them in the direction of Saturn’s main moon Titan to hunt for methane fuel.
Rounding out the primary solid is “The Boys'” Tomer Capone who performs the nervous co-pilot named Nash. Their lengthy haul journey will get a bit bumpy after the spacecraft sustains harm and so they should scramble to restore the structural accidents. Heated debates get away over the protection of their “slingshot” maneuver contemplating the Odyssey 1’s troublesome state and violence quickly erupts.
If there are any semi-spoilery clues as to what is going on on aboard the craft, an incredible place to begin is perhaps the Sam Rockwell-led film “Moon,” (arguably probably the greatest sci-fi films of all time) as one of many screenwriters, Nathan Parker, additionally penned that cult movie. He and fellow “Slingshot” scribe R. Scott Adams (“Donner Cross”) have crafted a low-budget science fiction gem that might presumably act as a David Mamet-like stage play in that the film is deeply character based mostly and sticks with three gamers for almost all of its run.
“Slingshot” additionally shares related themes with Håfström’s unnerving 2007 horror flick, “1408,” the place a famend creator of ghostly journey books spends a traumatic night time in a haunted lodge room and slowly loses his sanity. This time the achieved director swaps out the Dolphin Lodge’s paranormal lodging in New York Metropolis for a cramped spaceship on its strategy to Titan and lets the claustrophobia and wavering psychosis work its disorienting magic.
Cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg (“Polar”) and ace manufacturing designer Barry Chusid (“2012,” “Serenity,” “The Day After Tomorrow”) each mix to provide “Slingshot” a sparse visible type in a white antiseptic surroundings the place nothing might be trusted and points-of-view vacillate just like the shuddering ship.
It is an attractive effort by Håfström that may not break into an abundance of recent territory within the common style, however the dedicated solid and narrative trickery present simply sufficient leisure to bask in its mysterious labyrinth of sci-fi insanity.
As a summer time addition to your checklist of escapist releases, “Slingshot” fulfills its mission.
“Slingshot” launched into theaters on Aug. 30.
