Movie Breakdown: Sputnik (Noah)

Pre-Screening Stance:

IFC Midnight puts out some good horror flicks. IFC Midnight also puts out some not so great horror flicks. The trailer for Sputnik – a Russian alien flick from the looks of it – is moody and dark and full of scream-squealing body horrors. Here’s hoping it’s a good one.

Post-Screening Ramble:

The best thing about a well-made genre film – as in, you know, the genre of alien body-horror – is that originality, the old chestnut, is like an extra scoop of pistachio ice cream on your sundae. It’s nice to have, but even if you don’t get it, the sundae is still a heaping collection of sprinkles and ice cream and other good shit. Sputnik is like that. It isn’t original, at all, but the lack of new concepts or even different spins on old concepts doesn’t impede its smooth journey from start to finish. A Russian cosmonaut crash lands on his return from space, and he isn’t alone. A brash psychotherapist (the kind who nearly drowns a kid to save them from their, uh, mental demons) is brought to a compound to help “cure” the cosmonaut of his new found alien belly parasite. There’s a hard-nosed general, an irritating scientist and … yeah, well, I won’t give anything away about this very familiar plot, but I don’t really need too. Regardless, this is pretty great little film. The creature design on the alien – like an albino cobra glued to a scorpion with a weird car wash curtain mouth – is super creepy. The production design is solid if not derivative of Alien. The film plods along at a suitably slow, dramatic pace spiked with exploding heads and the unveiling of the already known plot points until it ends on a suitably dark and hopeless ending. So yeah, Sputnik, is not going to win an award for originality (or any awards really) but if you want to see a high-gloss alien flick with strong performances and good scares, it’ll do in a pickle.

One Last Thought:

The alien parasite’s first, uh, emergence on screen is pretty graphic. Meaning, it’s pretty awesome.