Ever hear of the Arch Oboler play, Night Of the Auk? It’s based on his 1945 radio drama, Rocket From Manhattan, in which a group of astronauts in the year 2000 are on their way back from the first successful moon landing. In the midst of celebrating their big accomplishment, they’re shocked beyond belief to learn that nuclear war has broken out on Earth.
Sadly, there’s nothing they can do but listen to Mission Control’s last transmission and wait to land on a devastated planet. If they can land at all, that is.
The premise of I.S.S. is pretty much identical except that Auk’s ending is less hopeful, although both it and I.S.S. leave the outcome open-ended. I.S.S. takes place on the International Space Station, obviously, and new crew member Kira is our audience conduit.
Brevity is the order of the day, as I.S.S. is a short movie with six cast members in a teeny tiny space. Biological engineer Kira has about a day to acquaint herself with her five fellow crew members, three of whom are Russian, and discover the oddities of working in zero gravity. It’s a pretty harmonious place, with the group sitting around belting out “Winds of Change” by the Scorpions and swilling a bit of scotch while telling inside jokes.
One would think their biggest obstacle the next day would be waking up with hangovers, but instead the crew spies mysterious explosions coming from the Earth. They also get cryptic messages from their respective countries ordering them to take control of the station at any cost.
Now the crew members begin to suspect each other, despite being a functioning unit the night before. Even within the various factions no one really trusts each other. Meanwhile, the explosions on Earth are growing in size and number and the I.S.S. is cut off from communication.
For the most part I.S.S. is an extremely tight movie. When stakes involve the characters being outside looking in at a seemingly hopeless situation, tension is a forgone conclusion. Add in a closed environment with no outside contact, and it’s only a matter of time before someone goes bonkers.
I.S.S., fortunately, keeps the action moving, which means the viewer’s questions naturally keep coming, and every word spoken by these characters is its own cliffhanger. It’s also pretty remarkable to see how tensions play out when everyone’s weightless. Tackling someone has a different effect when no one can fall to the ground—it’s more like a slow-motion body slam.
These characters, particularly Ariana DeBose’s Kira, stay remarkably calm for the kind of situation they’re in, probably because everyone is measuring what they say and do so carefully. This doesn’t give us a lot of time to care about them, but then again, there really isn’t time for much except the next story point.
The only scene that struck me as a little tonally different than the rest of the movie is when one character is making a sandwich, and he and one of the other characters eye a butcher knife and each other as if they’re waiting to see who grabs the knife first. I guess the filmmakers thought the movie needed some comic relief, and the scene does serve a purpose.
However, in some respects the movie is a little too tight. Because of the closed environment and the weightlessness, a lot of the fight sequences end up looking more like extreme hugging, and it’s not until characters break apart that we can see that So-and-So has run their former friend through with an ice pick or something. Instead of being shocked, it’s more like, “Oh, that happened.”
There’s also a little bit of teasing in the first few minutes that Something Bad Is Going To Happen, either with some minor chords, Kira’s mice gnawing their feet off, or Kira freaking out because her fellow crewmember can sleep with his eyes open. It’s unnecessary because where the story will go isn’t a mystery.
In the end, I.S.S. was better than I thought it was going to be, although it could have been better than it was. Mr. Oboler would probably be proud and more than a little sobered, given our current world situation and what’s gone on since 1945.
I.S.S. is currently in theaters. Rated R.
My grade: B-
Principal Cast: Ariana DeBose, Chris Messina, John Gallagher Jr., Maria Mashkova, Costa Ronin, Pilou Asbaek
Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.
Written by Nick Shafir.