‘The Astronaut’ Review: Kate Mara Is Trapped In A Sci-Fi Horror That Crashes to Earth [SXSW]

AUSTIN – Every so often, you see a film that leaves you questioning nearly everything about its construction when it turns what it’d been building on its head. In the best-case scenario, this can be interesting when the way it wrong-foots you as an audience deepens your relationship with it. It can leave you pondering questions that you wouldn’t have otherwise and desiring to see it again just so you can do so, knowing what it would become. It can be one of the great joys of cinema. In the case of writer-director Jess Varley’s “The Astronaut,” you are left with plenty of questions.

Unfortunately, not only are none of them particularly interesting, but it almost entirely undoes all of the potentially promising elements it was building until its wildly misguided ending. While a sci-fi horror starring Kate Mara as a troubled astronaut put through tests in an isolated home after a mission to space leads to her crashing back down to Earth could sound interesting in theory, the execution here falls far short of the mark. There can’t be a complete discussion of why, as that would give away the whole game at play, but it is also ultimately central to what leads the entire experience astray. Though it initially feels similar to the mainly engaging recent sci-fi series “Constellation” or last year’s more underseen yet still haunting “Meanwhile On Earth,” it’s when it throws itself completely off a narrative cliff that all this promise gets utterly dashed before your eyes. 

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This all opens in the aftermath of a mission in which Captain Sam Walker (Mara) came back down to Earth from space and mysteriously lost consciousness on the descent. The reasons beyond this are fuzzy (she can’t remember much of anything and is told that something crashed into her pod). However, there is generally a surprising lack of any genuine concern from the people looking after her. Even when she shares that she is also hallucinating things floating in the air, she is told this is normal.

Still, after some time recovering in a hospital where we are hurriedly introduced to her father, General William Harris (Laurence Fishburne), husband Mark (Gabriel Luna), and daughter Izzy (Scarlett Holmes), Sam is sent away to a remote home where she is going to be put through a series of tests to determine if she is fit to return to space. Though she is having a hard time and starting to spiral, she doesn’t say anything out of fear she could lose her ability to go on another mission. Making matters worse, something lurks in the darkness each night that is getting closer to the house. If only what it found when it got there was worth the journey.

While none of this is groundbreaking, there is something initially broadly engaging to what is essentially a bare-bones horror movie about a person alone in a house where a darker force is out there. It gets at something primal and frightening, with Mara hitting all the notes she needs to in a vulnerable yet strong central performance, which is the polar opposite of her work in one of the other films at SXSW. Where it starts to run into trouble is, with each passing night, the film begins to become less tense and more perplexing. Namely, the question of why she is not telling anyone about what is going on hinges on the increasingly flimsy explanation given in a quick exposition scene we hear over video call. It’s awkward and only grows more so as the film goes on.

While the motivation of her not wanting to jeopardize her chance to return to space could be flushed out to provide a more psychologically complex portrait of who Sam is, the film never does so and mainly uses this as a ho-hum narrative reason to keep things moving. Yet, as the threat outside the house seems to grow increasingly threatening, the lack of care anyone appears to have about what is happening grows borderline ridiculous. That is until the film pulls the rug out from under itself in a way that explains the why of this incongruity between the threat and how everyone behaves. However, he sabotages everything else as a result. It all just scrambles to a genuinely baffling conclusion.

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Following a scene that recalls Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” making it the second premiere at SXSW to draw from the beloved modern classic, “The Astronaut” throws in a flashback to end all flashbacks with bizarre narration that turns it into another film entirely. Suddenly, everything may make “narrative sense” and help wave away the weird disconnect at the film’s core, but it also dives into being so schmaltzy that it loses any goodwill it had built up.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop. Gone is the slight, though it is still an engaging enough genre flick we’d been in up until this point, as a woefully unearned and more manipulative sci-fi melodrama abruptly takes its place. It’s disappointing at the very least and a shift that verges on the edge of parody at the very worst. The only lasting question it leaves us with is not about what is out there in the vast galaxy or our place in it but why this film does all its characters so dirty. [C-]

“The Astronaut” had its World Premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

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