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ALIEN HORROR SUMMER - NO. 17 SPUTNIK (2020) MOVIE REVIEW

Nate Lemann

In this entry, a Russian cosmonaut survives a horrible reentry to Earth in 1983 Russia, but he did not come back alone…


by Nate Lemann

The Creature & Oksana Akinshina in “Sputnik”
The Creature & Oksana Akinshina in “Sputnik”
 

Egor Abramenko’s COVID release did not get the love it deserves, telling the story of a hero Russian cosmonaut (Pytor Fyodorov) who survives a freak accident when he and his co-pilot are making reentry back to Earth. We hard cut from the crash to a nurse named Tatyana (Oksana Akinshina) who is under review by a medical board for administering a dangerous treatment to a young patient, curing him of debilitating seizures. However, in still-communist Russia, the right thing and the permitted actions can vary greatly. She does however catch the eye of a USSR Colonel (Fyodor Bondarchuk), who is more concerned with results than methods.


He has an offer for Tatyana: come help him inspect the cosmonaut and see if he is ready to be released back into the world. What at first seems like a cut-and-dry case of PTSD from the crash quickly proves itself to not be so straight-forward. The Colonel shows Tatyana the complication: every night while the cosmonaut sleeps (and unbeknownst to him), an alien entity emerges from his throat and grows into a deadly predator (imagine the face huggers from “Alien” were five times larger, with two dangerous claw-like hands). The issue becomes that they can’t just kill this beast; every blow inflected on the alien hurts the cosmonaut. They are linked and Tatyana’s goal is to find a way to separate the two safely. While Tatyana is trying to find a way to save this hero, she starts to suspect that her Russian military overseers have more nefarious intentions for this beast.


This film is such a wonderful throwback to 1980s sci-fi thrillers. Aside for Tatyana, every character is not clean, carrying dark and, sometimes, selfish intentions (even the hero cosmonaut). It is a brave choice as it really leaves it up the the viewer to decide who they should be rooting for. It’s neat and complex storytelling, making for ever-evolving dynamics where loyalties can be very fickle. The three leads are marvelous in their complex dances with morality and their lives.


The creature is of wonderful design, if at times gross in how it uses the cosmonaut as shelter. It can switch from the ever innocent to the very deadly in the blink of an eye, with its kills spectacularly gruesome. It has a very innocent vibe to it, even in its bloody violence, like an apex predator captured to be tested on. Is it really evil if it’s just a creature who belongs higher up on the food chain than us?


This remains one of the best foreign language horror films of the last few decades, a true introspective take on internal Russian politics in a dark time and the fight for survival and what that will drive one to do.


 

FINAL RATING: 4/5 Stars (Complex and nuances creature feature)

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Hi! I'm Nate and I love to talk all things movies. I'll be posting new reviews, recent rewatches, and much more on this site. So come on and let's talk movies! 

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