Ever since Gravity, it’s felt like there’s been a haunting prestige movie about realistic space exploration every single year. Not long after was Interstellar. Then The Martian, Hidden Figures, First Man, Ad Astra, Stowaway, etc. For subject matter meant to be about the unknown and unexplored, this subgenre seems incredibly and abundantly well tread. And that’s quite apparent in I.S.S, the latest in a long line of astronaut-movie allegories to grace the big screen in the past decade.

I.S.S comes from Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. And it tells the story of two sets of aerospace engineers — American and Russian — coming together on the International Space Station during a time of political turmoil between their two nations. Though considered to be neutral territory, tensions rise between the two when nuclear war breaks out on Earth below them, and they’re given classified instructions from each of their respective countries to take the space station for their countries at all costs.

Starting off with the good, I.S.S isn’t a terrible movie. In fact it’s quite entertaining, if not a bit predictable and heavy handed. The performances, particularly from lead Ariana DeBose, Masha Mashkova, and Pilou Asbæk, are relatively strong. And the paranoid premise of the film does make things relatively tense and pretty gripping. The characters, for the most part, are reasonably sympathetic, and generally realistic, despite making stupid decisions once-in-a-while (I found myself saying aloud “why would you do that?” several times).

I.S.S is essentially a bottle movie. All of the action and twists are contained to the International Space Station. Which gives everything a very claustrophobic feel. We see this from the very moments DeBose’s character, Kira Foster, arrives at the I.S.S. This means you wouldn’t expect a whole lot of action in this film. But looks can be deceiving. And much like a less snappy Tarantino movie, the tension and suspense are driven by the characters, the dramatic irony, and the dialogue. And the film is better for it. However, you can’t achieve this in a rewarding manner without painting a picture of who these characters are.

This is probably I.S.S‘s greatest strength. Cowperthwaite and writer Nick Shafir, do a really good job establishing fairly endearing relationships out of these characters in the breezy amount of time allotted to them. And it’s because they really are trying to make them feel human, asking the question, what would we do in the same situation. Setting up this level of empathy also sets you up for the potential betrayals and conflicts that unfold during the events of the movie, so things actually have a bit of emotional weight with each tragedy that occurs. Would I go as far as to say we truly care about these characters? Probably not (I’ll explain more later). But we, at minimum, get a basic understanding of them, and, on a base level, lament when the aforementioned tragedies befall them because we can understand what a conflict between Russia and the United States would look like, and the truth that people aren’t their countries.

It’s also a really well paced movie. With a mercifully short runtime, the minute you are immersed into the situation, the only thing you really feel is tension and suspense. The cast sells the urgency of the moment well, and Cowperthwaite knows how to build on that tension, making for a very efficient movie, where no scenes are wasted in the grand scheme of keeping the film’s trajectory running smoothly.

All that said, the issue with I.S.S isn’t on an entertainment level, however. It’s that, like many space-centric films, it tries to be deeper than it really is, and never really succeeds on that level. The idea of human empathy and unity being needed during a time of division and tension, but told in the metaphor of a space film, isn’t new. But the approach I.S.S takes with it is extremely heavy handed. From the very moment that a bunch of mice are introduced for one of the science projects Foster is working on, you know where this movie is headed, and it seems pretty predictable. Even when a character disappears, you basically know they’ll turn up again later. And furthermore, the use of Russian and US relations feels particularly pandering and obvious.

And it’s fine if you want to shout your message to an audience rather than let them discover it for themselves. However, to do so with as much of a melodramatic hand as this film takes with the theme makes the message feel somewhat immature in its approach to the subject. There are clear cut heroes and villains on both sides within the film. But it’s not always like that in real life, hence division and mistrust. It’s a film that tries to be realistic in its approach to its characters, but in the sense that it tends to martyr them or vilifies them, cutting them short of any real semblance of true humanity. In short it provides problems but gives us hollow solutions, never really challenging its own moral code. And doing so would provide the film with a much greater sense of philosophical and thematic complexity, over merely settling for entertaining.

On a technical level, the visual effects leave much to be desired. They’re not terrible, and for a micro-budget, the film does what it needs to, but you can tell the production wasn’t given a “Marvel” budget, with some of the external space sequences feeling a bit hokey at times. That said the score is good and the cinematography is fair. There isn’t anything mind-blowing in the way of Saltburn, Maestro, or Poor Things, but there is a particularly haunting sequence of what nuclear war would look like from the heights of space, and it’s absolutely chilling.

On the whole, I.S.S is a serviceable and entertaining movie, that’s at its best when it’s paranoid, claustrophobic, and tense. It’s just a bit cliched and not particularly ambitious, especially when it comes to its heavy-handed message about unity and human nature. But that said, the performances are good, and elevate the characters and their empathetic relationships beyond the simple narrative. It should be enough to entertain someone for a scant 90+ minutes, but much like what you’d expect in space, expect any memory of this movie to drift off and float away once the credits roll.

Overall Score: B-