Horror Movie Review: 'Sputnik'

A cold war based horror thriller in this day and age had better hope an audience is educated enough to understand the tropes at play. Perhaps in Russia the trope of a government capable of murdering astronauts to protect a secret new weapon might seem noteworthy and plausible. In America, the trope exists but it’s aged. The audience for a horror movie in this day and age is unlikely to be old enough to remember the intensity of the cold war and the dangers it posed, especially inside the Iron Curtain.

That I feel like I need to explain what the Iron Curtain is goes well toward my point. What was once widely known and well-remembered are now relics. Vladimir Putin has created new fearsome but far more modern tropes. Today’s Russian villains are hackers and the spies are tech geniuses and anti-heroes. The villains of the past were functionaries who murdered regularly and with impunity for political purposes that may still exist but don’t carry the anxiety-riddled atmosphere that accompanied the Cold War.

Sputnik, a new Russian horror movie from first time director Egor Abramenko, is directed as if audiences recall the Cold War and the villains of that day. The film is a sci-fi horror movie about an alien coming to Earth in a crashed space mission. The alien falls under the control of a Russian Colonel who fears the retribution of his government should they find out he’s attempting to use this alien create a new weapon in order to further his political career. That trope is familiar for people of a certain age. For the age of the modern horror fan however, that trope is lacking and much of the tension of Sputnik hinges on that Cold War era angst.

Pyoytr Fyorodov stars in Sputnik as Konstantin Veshnyakov, a Russian Cosmonaut on his way back to Earth. The Russian are completing a manned space mission in 1983 and are about to return to Earth when the return vehicle is attacked by an unseen force outside the ship. The ship manages to make it back to Earth, landing in the Russian Steppes, far from the capital of Moscow, and the prying eyes of Russian leadership.

Tasked with recovering the heroic Cosmonauts and finding out what happened to them is Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk). Colonel Semiradov recovers the ship and imprisons Konstantin in order to examine how he survived when his co-pilot did not. The secret involves the alien attacker. To get to the bottom of what is going on in Konstantin’s mind, Semiradov calls upon the talents of a controversial, recently suspended, Russian Doctor by the name of Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina).

Dr. Klimova is notable for her willingness to go beyond traditional methods in order to save lives. We meet her as she is disciplined at her hospital in Moscow. Dr Klimova used an unproven and dangerous method to save the life of a teenage boy. For that, she’s been placed on leave, possibly permanently. That’s when she’s recruited by Semiradov to join his team and evaluate the famed Cosmonaut discreetly. What Semiradov does not tell Dr Klimova is what will drive the plot of Sputnik.

There are a number of things I like about Sputnik. I liked the cast, especially Bondarchuk whose sharp features and commanding presence are tense and mysterious. He has a strained look on his face, as if he were constantly at attention and yet completely relaxed in manner. It’s an odd and compelling combination of traits. The rest of the cast, including the two leads, are also quite good with sympathetic qualities all around.

Where Sputnik lacks is in tension and suspense. I certainly did jump when I first saw the alien creature and worried what it was about to do next in the dark. However, by the next few encounters and via what we learn in the plot, that tension dissipates. It becomes especially trite as we get to the typical, unsurprising romantic plot between Klimova and Konstantin. Their relationship is too pat, too expected and it comes off as stale.

The alien itself is quite a B Movie creation. Creature creation in this day and age when we’ve seen just about everything is a real challenge. If you are going to make a creature feature, like Sputnik, you either need a great alien creation or a good enough plot and direction surrounding the alien to distract from your lack of a great alien. Sputnik unfortunately does not have enough good stuff around the alien to distract from how mildly impressive the alien is.

That brings me back to my original point. The creators of Sputnik attempt to put a time table on the movie that is intended to create suspense. That's why the movie is set in 1983. That is in the timeframe of Cold War tension and the movie wants that suspenseful, angsty Cold War suspense by proxy. That suspense however, lays much on how much you know about the dangerous machinations of the Cold War era Russian intelligence and political apparatus. If you go in knowing what a danger this unseen group of Russian politicos and spies present, you get a little more tension in this story.

Unfortunately, there is no time to try to explain why such tension exists. Instead, the movie fudges the dangers at hand from the Russian government of the Cold War era and that forces the plot to rely heavily on the weak romance and equally weak alien action and gore. Thus, Sputnik never really rises to its potential. There is a pretty good Cold War horror movie here that just never fully arrives. Instead, we get a middling, B-movie, creature feature that passes by easily enough but disappoints more than it excites.

Sputnik will be available to stream via IFC Midnight on many streaming platforms on August 14th.