Espèce Inconnue

Cinematography (camera, pace, lighting, angles) is top-notch. Score is majestic and utterly suggestive of a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere and the sense of grappling with the unknown. Acting is good enough. However, the story goes nowhere really. The reach of the plot runs out at just over an hour, once the picture has become clear of what the situation is. From there on, it becomes nonsensical, as it lacks a credible motivation for the main characters' choices of course of action. There is also little reason behind a middle ranked army officer keeping all of this secret from headquarters. And the child subplot is rather superfluous and contributes nothing. The resolution of the story is hasty and fairly commonplace, a sign of the script having run out of original ideas.

The film is, therefore, a mixed bag. Technically, it stands its ground very well against better and more expensive sci-fi productions from Hollywood . It is true that special effects and CGI are sparse here, but this film is not meant to tread the same roads as thinly-scripted, CGI-heavy, teen sensations like Transformers. Instead, a well worked out script would have allowed expert direction to make this into a solid, sober and tense, sci-fi drama.

Well, what do we have here? Could this be one of those films that have stopped coming from big studios a long time ago? Could this be a decent, well-made and thought provoking story in an interesting setting with great visuals and acting? In 2020?

Well, yes! Leave it to the Russians to bring some loving Sci-Fi back. Set in an intriguingly nostalgic feeling USSR of the 80s, "Sputnik" is a slow-paced, but increasingly intense story that manages to make you think a bit. The characters are nuanced, the plot is adequate, the cinematography very nice to excellent, and even the CGI is better than many films with way higher budgets.

If you don't try to project any "Western" expectations onto it and maybe even understand the "Russian soul" a bit, you will definitely enjoy this.

Usually you don't expect much from non American sci fi movies. But this one is a good find. It's like seeing those movies of the 80's or 90's that still weren't that formulaic and doesn't try either to lecture you on morals or is totally devoid of any moral standing. The pace is slow but not boring (something American movies have lost the ability to keep) and the story evolves naturally and never fails to its own logic (there is no "you gotta be kidding me" moment as it all matches and fits without foolishness or absurdity, given the preset premises). Maybe it needed a little more or a little else to excel but it's quite a good product and the special effects are perfect (on par or even surparssing the American CGI's).

Set in 1983, this film opens with two cosmonauts preparing to return to Earth; they see something on the outside of their capsule. When the capsule lands one of them is dead and the other, Konstantin Veshnyakov, appears to be injured. He has no memory of what happened. The authorities, under Colonel Semiradov, invite psychiatrist Tatyana Klimova to try to help recover those memories. She is taken to a facility in Soviet Kazakhstan where she learns that there is far more to Konstantin's story than she was told... he has brought something back with him; something potentially very dangerous.

I enjoyed this film; some of the ideas may have been less than original but the setting gave it a freshness. Early on I wasn't sure what genre the film was as it is a while before it becomes obvious what the creature does and why. The design of the alien creature was impressive as was the way it moved. The cast did a solid job, most obviously Oksana Akinshina and Pyotr Fyodorov as Tatyana and Konstantin. While there isn't too much violence, what there is, is quite gory although unlikely to disturb horror fans. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to sci-fi fans.

These comments are based on watching the film in Russian with English subtitles.

I know something about Russian cinema (I live near Russia and I speak Russian).

Let me explain why this movie is not what it could've been.

First of all, modern big-budget Russian cinema is desperately trying to copy Hollywood-style productions and franchises, they even borrow some scripts and ideas (which is fine, many European filmmakers do this). Indie Russian filmmakers mostly do other types of films and there are lots of great Russian films out there, like Durak (2014), Leviathan (2014), Zhit (2010), Zavod (2018) and many more.

This film is not an exception in terms of Hollywood copy-pasting. Up to around 1 hr mark, they just copy scenes and concepts from popular films like Annihilation, Venom, Gravity (opening scene), Arrival, After Earth, and Alien Covenant. This is a common practice since sometimes they just straight-up rip off scripts and whole films like Nochnye strazhi (2016) (MIB rip-off with vampires), Den D (2008) (Commando scene-by-scene ripoff), Voin (2015) (a rip-off of Warrior (2011) and many, many more.

They do this copy-paste pretty well, the cinematography is great, the 80ties Soviet-era setting works although they never really dive deep into it since this film was made for international release and most of the more complicated stuff just wouldn't be understood. In this film though they re-create those scenes not exactly knowing what they are meant to establish. Many scenes are supposed to be emotional but not in this film, they clearly misunderstood the tone of some of those since the music is heavily misused in this. Like the scene where the doctor is transported to the facility, which was taken from the Arrival, but they play military-style music which does not fit well into the "delving into the unknown" style of the scene, more like an action film build-up.

Right around 1hr mark, they run of these and just start making their own stuff up, making really big stretches in terms of the script. Since the premise was a mix of other films they didn't really know where to go with this and thus, the film transformed into a mess of unbelievable scenes and random unnecessary subplots. Character motivation is completely dropped and all the things the characters do make absolutely no sense, nobody knows what and why they are doing.

The kid subplot was so incredibly unnecessary and disconnected that removing it from the story would change absolutely nothing. I have absolutely no idea why it was even included (probably because of using this mix of ideas they didn't really know what genre the film is supposed to be, a sci-fi horror? a family drama? who knows).

The ending is very messy and kind of defeats the purpose of most of the unmotivated character actions, which is a staple of these types of films.

We will surely see more of these since foreign markets are very profitable, and since most of these big productions are co-funded by Fond Kino (Cinema Fund, Russian governmental organization), the creators are not really scared of losing money and are just trying to build up better visuals and more recognizable imagery to sell their product worldwide.

Even though this film was quite a mess, I still want to give props to the filmmakers (one of which is the son of a great Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk (the author of many great films and even an oscar-winning Voyna i mir (1966-67), who plays the commander in this one) for achieving a technical level of a good Hollywood production.

Too bad they had no original concept or a general idea of what they are trying to show.

Hope this review makes it easier for foreign viewers to understand and appreciate this film for what it is.