Stowaway (2021)
Directed by Joe Penna
A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.
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5 films that influenced Stowaway
What critics say influenced Stowaway
While not quite of the high concept, blockbuster pedigree of the likes of "The Martian" and its "I'm going to have to science the sh*t out of this" creative storyline to save the day, "Stowaway" works quite well on its smaller, more intimate scale.
"Stowaway's" spare, realistic version of space travel brings to mind a number of recent examples, including "Gravity," "The Martian" and "Ad Astra."
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Gravity , Interstellar , Ad Astra , Proxima , First Man , The Midnight Sky , The Martian — and that’s just in recent memory, because you could add The Right Stuff , 2001: A Space Odyssey and Apollo 13 too.
Instead, the film lives somewhere between “Gravity,” (which also seems to have influenced Penna’s first film, 2018’s “Arctic” with Mads Mikkelsen) minus the ravishing velvet blackness of its immense imagery, and “The Martian,” minus the chatty affability of Matt Damon’s stranded potato farmer.
Similarly, an initial solution to the problem involving David and his algae will feel familiar to anyone who saw Matt Damon struggle to expand his food supply in The Martian .
But in recent years we’ve seen these movies really take a step forward (thank you Gravity and The Martian) in prevalence and in smarts.
While ably orchestrated, this final stretch—featuring actors in spacesuits scrambling around a damaged ship—inevitably recalls Gravity , and lacks the technical facility to compete with Alfonso Cuarón at his most ingenious.
A US/German co-production sporting expert tech feats and narrative beats earning comparison to Cuaron’s Gravity (2013), Penna and regular co-scribe Ryan Morrison move from the chilly environs of their last endeavor, Arctic (2018) to unprecedented perils in the heavens.
And while the obligatory suspenseful spacewalks are perhaps less impressive than those in Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity or more recently The Midnight Sky , there is still a commendable philosophical thread running through the film’s narrative that makes up for any other shortcomings.
Joe Penna's sophomore feature clearly owes a debt to 1969's Marooned in its depiction of a small space crew dealing with a life-threatening crisis.
This isn’t to put it in the company of more metaphysical movie marvels like “2001,” “Solaris,” “High Life” and two-thirds of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine.”
We’re in a spaceship this time, and in the cinematic terrain of Gravity, Ad Astra and Danny Boyle’s Sunshine.
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What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Gravity , Interstellar , Ad Astra , Proxima , First Man , The Midnight Sky , The Martian — and that’s just in recent memory, because you could add The Right Stuff , 2001: A Space Odyssey and Apollo 13 too.
The movie opens in the capsule during liftoff, with Penna taking a page from “First Man,” conveying the dread-ridden aspect of space flight through the volcanic tumult the crew members are subjected to.