Egor Abramenko’s intense cosmic threat thriller SPUTNIK is so much more than a Russian Alien.
With mounting alarm the young psychologist observes the scene unfolding on the CCTV. The cosmonaut is thrown to the floor in a convulsive motion. From his mouth oozes a ridge of slime. Two spindly limbs emerge from this and the being begins to creep forward. The military man, also watching, has seen this all before….
Sputnik means satellite in Russian but also carries connotations of fellow traveller. The film with this title, a thriller with a science-fiction premise and scary movie trappings, is a rare beast in Russia. Such a mix of genres is matched only by The Fatal Eggs, an adaptation of the Bulgakov novel from 1995 and Diggers (2016) and Avanpost from last year.
Intended for release last April, the film ended up getting its premier on the net, owing to the pandemic. There it gathered over one million viewers in Russia alone. I, however, waited for the cinema doors to be flung open again, and my patience was rewarded. SPUTNIK is one picture that deserves to be experienced in a large and loud format.
Egor Abramenko, the man on the high stool, has been churning out commercials for years but his other brainchild was an eleven minute long short called Passenger released three years ago. This was to be the egg that was to hatch SPUTNIK.
Some bankable celebrities signed up for the project. That Golden Boy of the Russian media Fyodor Bondarchuk has come from behind the cameras to fill one of the main roles. So has the stately 33 year-old St Petersburgian Oksana Akinshina, who had a cameo role in Rassvet, this time being given prime space.
Interrupted mission.
Andropov is in the Kremlin – it is 1983 – and around the earth circle two cosmonauts on a routine orbital mission. They are about to re-enter the atmosphere when it happens. There is an unholy knock on the spacecraft’s hull….Only one of the crew members makes it back to terra firma alive – and he has black eyes….
Later a female psychologist – Tatyana Klimova – with a history of employing maverick methods, (Akinshina) is getting a dressing down at a tribunal in Moscow. As she leaves in disgrace she is approached by a military colonel called Semiparov (Fyodor Bondarchuk). He considers her to be of made of the right stuff for a position he has to offer her. This involves reaearch into a unique incident.
He chaperones her on a journey to the Caucuses. There, in a military installation, she learns that a cosmonuat who is supposed to have died on return is alive but infected with a parasite of unearthly origin, and no memory of how it got there. (Pyotr Fyodorov who also appeared in Avanpost).
Soon Tatyana begins to harbour qualms about the humanitarian implications of how this hero of the Soviet Union is being treated – as well as the uses to which the resulting knowledge will be put. Can she escape the compound and return to Moscow to expose the dark doings of this rogue operation?
Space age possession.
This 1 hour and 53 minute drama has a measured pace and highlights the human dilemmas that the situation throws up (challenging the view that science fiction and horror lacks human depth). There is even a sort of sub-plot concerning the neglected child of the cosmonaut, languishing away in a care home in Rostov-on-the-Don.
The two story writers Andrey Zolotarev and Oleg Malovichko had also both worked on Attraction (2017) and Invasion (2020) which were alien contact tales directed by Bondarchuk. Those blockbusters, however, were frothy fun-for-all-the-family affairs whereas SPTUTNIK contains more intelligence in its details.
With SPUTNIK being something of a star vehicle for her, Akinshina makes for a likeable lead. She is no Sigourney Weaver-like action hero but a woman constrained by her professional role while thrown into an extraordinary situation.
Bondarchuk, meanwhile, does what he does best: lend gravitas to the proceedings. He portrays a complex man with some paternal affection for Tatyana and a begrudging dependence on the creature who he wishes to isolate and exploit.
The assistant-to-the-heroine is a stiff white-coated drudge of a research scientist (played with conviction by Anton Vasilev) whose conscience is awakened by Tatyana. It is he who phones through to the Moscow authorities with some important information before being gunned down.
The creature itself is a fine piece of work, if not original.Stitched up by Main Road Post, its a puppet and CGI slimy quadruped with several eyes, insectoid limbs, buzz saw teeth and cute floppy ears. Living off the hormones produced by fear, it has a penchant for cracking open heads and slurping on the contents.
Last, but no means least is the score by Oleg Karpachev. With its bombastic drum-heavy sound, this really signs and seals the sense of a shadowy secret mission.
Well received.
The primary mood is one of mounting unease. It is refreshing to see that the director has not relied on sudden noises and appearances to stun us, but instead there are some drawn out nightmarish sequences, such as when the alien is being fed live prisoners. There is some gross out involved as well as some tomato ketchup flying about (both untypical for a Russian film) but this is restrained.
The 1983 period placement is a puzzle. Is a hidden event in history being shown to us – as in Apollo 18 ? Or is it a way round the problem of how to portray the military as fragmented and corrupted without incurring the wrath of the censors? Or is this just an exercise in nostalgia? (An iconic Russian toy does play a part in the proceedings).
Reaching America and the UK, SPUTNIK has set forth an excited rattle of keyboards and much of what is being said is positive. The default comparison most seem to be making is with the Alien franchise.
True SPUTNIK has a ballsy heroine, but this is less rare in Russian cinema, and otherwise it is earth bound, set in the past, and much less of a stalk-and-slash romp. A more telling comparison is with the British television series from 1953 – The Quatermass Experiment. The initial premise is almost identical except that SPUTNIK then takes off on a different tangent.
The Quatermass Experment`For me, the film leans too much on hackneyed tropes about a caring, maternal woman in opposition to a monomanic, ruthless male. Otherwise, the borrowing fom Nigel Kneale aside, it is quite fresh and there is something primal and archetypal in the idea of a man having a goblin in his stomach which comes out by night. As Tatiana asks: Parasite or symbiote?.
Many Russian horror movies seem targetted at a young South East Asian audience and tend to play down their national origins. Not so SPUTNIK, which -with its setting in the steppes, glimpse of Soviet times and concern with military machinations – is Russian through and through.
Lead image: in-rating.ru
The trailer (English subtitles):
