Sputnik

I'll be honest, I was really excited to see this, I don't have much experience with Russian Cinema unfortunately, but I'd this was anything to go by, then I am keen to see more.

A very good start, it's creepy, it's imaginative, I can truly believe that this is set in The Cold War USSR in the 1980's.

Well acted, well produced, I'm no film expert, but in terms of the visuals, it feels more American cinema than European cinema to me, it looks great.

I just love how Russian it is, from the name, to the Russian dolls that pop up.

It's chilling, it looks great, it exceeded my expectations, I perhaps didn't enjoy the ending quite to much, but that's a minor quibble, all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it. 8/10.

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.

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.

I have to say,I really liked it. The story was tense from the beggining and the acting was quiet good. This is how every sci-fi movie should be...Entertaining,good plot, new and fresh ideas...Overall a good sci-fi movie... well done

I am happy to see that Russian scifi films are finally moving towards the Russian scifi literature that I loved so much as a child. This is a wonderful little gem, a Russian version of Life, but with more focus on the people and less on the special effects and action scenes. Not perfect, mind you, but so far the best Russian science fiction film I've seen them make recently. And the special effects were very good, too, which makes the decision to keep them in the background so much more laudable.

The weakest link is the main character, unfortunately, who does things that make little sense for a scientist. Yet her contribution is not that of a character, but as a carrier of the audience, so what she does is really not that relevant.

I hope Russian cinema will start bringing back the intellectual slow burn story, the civilian scientists that have to solve problems without relying on strength or weapons, but on their own thinking.