Movie Review ~ Slingshot

Some of the greatest films on Earth haven’t even taken place here.  Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable 1968 epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ridley Scott’s horror masterpiece Alien from 1979, and Alfonso Cuarón’s breathless spectacle Gravity in 2013 showed us not just superior technical achievements in the medium but the psychological toll of space travel.  I don’t know about you, but the isolation of the vast void of space gives me the shivers more than any axe-wielding maniac or flesh-eating disease.  It’s likely why I, ahem, gravitate toward sci-fi selections that wield their outer space setting as an ominous locale of constant danger.

Just a few weeks after the release of Alien: Romulus, Fede Álvarez’s thrilling new chapter in the Alien franchise, audiences are being given another opportunity to venture into orbit with Swedish director Mikael Håfström’s Slingshot. Aspiring to join the esteemed cosmic club of rewatchable winners mentioned above, this long-delayed thriller with a tiny cast and confined setting may seem promising on paper. However, it turns out to be a meandering spacewalk to nowhere. Set to hit theaters on August 30, Slingshot, unfortunately, fails to make a Big Bang, proving that in a movie theater, everyone can hear you yawn.

In the not-so-distant future, Earth is grappling with a severe shortage of renewable energy and natural resources.   As the film opens, we meet an elite trio of astronauts aboard the Odyssey 1 en route to Titan, one of Saturn’s 146 moons. This moon is believed to be a potential savior, rich in the natural gas our planet desperately needs.  Halfway through their multi-year journey, they are roused from their slumber every 90 days to ensure their ship’s functionality and readiness for the most perilous part of their journey. As they approach Jupiter, a critical maneuver is required (guess what it’s called?) to propel them to their destination. A single mistake could leave them stranded in the vast expanse of space, leaving them helpless and dead in the water. 

The unforgiving realities of space travel are already affecting the men.  Though Captain Franks (Laurence Fishburne, All the Old Knives) remains cool as a cucumber, Nash (Tomer Capone) begins to fear their ship may have been compromised during their sleep.  Riding the middle ground is the soft-spoken John (Casey Affleck, Oppenheimer), who had long-dreamed of this mission and isn’t ready to turn back so quickly when Nash raises multiple red flags.  However, he’s struggling with memories of Zoe (Emily Beecham, a Cannes Best Actress winner for 2019’s Little Joe, who is surprisingly dull here), a woman he left behind on Earth, and a grip on reality that’s becoming tenuous with every light year they travel.

The premise of R. Scott Adams & Nathan Parker’s screenplay has all the ingredients for an enjoyably paranoid sci-fi thriller, but it falls victim early on to poor pacing and characters you feel nothing for.  As the unraveling John, Affleck is method acting his way to exhaustion throughout the film.  You can understand why John is having trouble adjusting to life in space, but Affleck presents less as an astronaut besieged by visions and voices and more as an actor who’d rather be anywhere else.  Disappointingly, Fishburne is on total autopilot here, leaving Capone to act for the both of them.  The result is three actors that feel like they are operating in different solar planes, never uniting in the same star system.

Some of this falls on Håfström to have corrected on set.  The director of the Stephen King adaptation 1408 in 2007 and the Stallone-Schwarzenegger vehicle Escape Plan in 2013, Håfström is no stranger to close-quarters filmmaking, but his attempts to build tension in Slingshot are resoundingly flat.  In the press notes, Håfström compares this film to his work on 1408, and I can see the parallels between the themes of solitude and an encroaching mental breakdown, but the similarities stop there.  While no classic, at least 1408 found its pulse early on and maintained a rhythm.  The fact that Slingshot only comes alive in its gripping finale further underlines the problem that this screenplay started with an ending and worked backward, leaving the rest of the overlong film as pure filler.  

Even when sci-fi strikes out in plot, word, and deed, the technical elements can offer a reprieve, but even these key points of elevation take a tumble.  The costume design looks like it was picked up in a hurry, with the crew sporting what looks suspiciously like sweatpants and a sweat-wicking shirt from Kohl’s.  The design of the ship’s interior is a puzzler, too.  I was at Walt Disney World recently, and the brightly lit, sanitary, clean lines reminded me of a rejected pre-ride portion of one of their rides.  A general lack of imagination on each level makes the entire experience feel uninspired.

It’s telling that Slingshot completed filming in 2022 but has gathered dust on the shelf until now. While it’s becoming more common for films to be held back so studios can find the perfect time to allow audiences to discover a gem, dumping a stinker on an unassuming public has never gone out of style.  Releasing Håfström’s aimless outing in the shadow of another space-set film isn’t doing the film any favors by comparison, either.  Dated and derivative, the marketing promises thrills and high stakes but delivers zero of the grave chills we crave.