‘I.S.S.’ Review: Ariana DeBose Is Stuck In Space [Tribeca]
Ariana DeBose in I.S.S. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
Sometimes, the first act of a film gives you the slightest amount of hope for the rest of it, only to be let down by your initial expectations being correct. That’s the case with I.S.S., a sci-fi drama that revolves around a concept not too hard to understand and one that, from reading its synopsis, I really wanted to enjoy. We begin on a rocket, following Kira (Ariana DeBose, Oscar winner for West Side Story) and Christian (John Gallagher Jr. of the Green Day Broadway show American Idiot) as they board the ISS, a return trip for Christian and a first-time venture into space for Kira. Once on board, they get set up — Kira, a bioengineer, unloads her mice and meets the team, consisting of American Leader Gordon Barrett (Chris Messina, the agent in Air) and the Russian team who shares the space station with the Americans (played by Maria Mashkova, Pilou Asbæk, and Costa Ronin). Instead of taking the time to establish our location and the characters (who they are, the dynamics between them, etc.), I.S.S. decides to jump straight into its narrative — a single plot beat that’s maintained throughout the entire (overlong) 95-minute runtime.
I.S.S. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
While marveling at the Earth from above — not even 15 minutes into the movie — Kira sees flashes of light coming from the planet’s surface — nuclear explosions. It turns out that in this distant near future, Russia has launched a war against the United States, with both governments ordering their citizens on board the ISS to take control of the ship regardless of what it takes. This creates a conflict between the people on board the ISS, a conflict that the film solely focuses on — but never truly examines except for a few moments in the second act — and wants us to be interested in, even though it doesn’t give us a reason as to why. From the get-go, there’s a lurking question, “What happens after someone gets control? Are they going back to Earth (after it was just bombarded by nukes)? What next?” When as a viewer, your sole focus is not on the journey but the outcome, there’s a clear missing factor in the reality that we need to care about the how and the why, not just the what next.
For a “high-stakes thriller,” this makes the stakes incredibly low because no matter what — unless they go incredibly sci-fi, too far for the grounded-adjacent story looking to be told — there’s no resolution here. They either die in space or on Earth. That’s it, end of story, right? To the film’s credit, it works around this by aiming to be more of a character study that examines the actions that these astronauts take while (not always) knowing their fates. This shift of focus may be the only positive thing to say about the film’s script, as the complete disregard for exposition of any kind and shoddy dialogue make the later sections of I.S.S. difficult to push through.
I.S.S. Courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival.
There’s a point in the third act of I.S.S. where the actions and words of one character confuse another so much that they ask, “What?” That is the exact feeling I had while watching — not knowing where the story was heading or if it was trying to pull off a half-assed Shutter Island-esque twist (it didn’t) — a twist that would make it the second film this year to try and fail at it. Over the film’s course, there are a few interesting moments that attempt to unpack the actions of people in this position given this directive, but they never seem to get how to do it in a way that doesn’t feel artificial, and one too many “Ha! We tricked you!” scenarios makes this tedious and stakeless, proving that, once again, no movie regarding space and the future of humanity will top Interstellar (hi Christopher Nolan, can’t wait for Oppenheimer).
On a more positive note, the filmmaking and craft surrounding the way that zero gravity is realized in the film is truly impressive, creating a seamless, realistic (to be fair, I’ve never been in space) look that elevates the film to an extent. There’s a good movie somewhere in the story of I.S.S., but it certainly isn’t this one. Maria Mashkova and Ariana DeBose do their best to create good performances out of the script, but there are only one or two moments where their work gets to shine, and even then, the light isn’t that bright.
I.S.S. premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 12.
