‘Stowaway’ Is A Surprisingly Tense Moral Thriller In Space [Review]

Space has always served as a vast, grand, and mysterious canvas for directors to paint and project their metaphorical journeys on. Much like the desert in Westerns, the journey through space is a deeply intimate and human one, often an exploration of the soul and the human condition when at its best. The Netflix drama “Stowaway” grapples with some of these ideas and questions of morality when a group of astronauts travel from Earth to Mars on a two-year voyage. Their goal? To find life and find themselves.

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Director Joe Penna imagines a near future where humans have gone searching beyond Earth for peace, life, and answers. The leader, Marina Barrett (Toni Collette), a calm, collected astronaut with a family back home, is tasked with getting the ship from point A to point B in smooth, predictable fashion. Her two colleagues are Ivy league grads and award-winning contestants who went through basic training to continue their research on Mars, medical doctor Zoe Levenson (Anna Kendrick), and biologist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim). But their training couldn’t have prepared them for what happens next.

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When the trip takes a turn for the worse, Kim loses his lunch, while Zoe’s neck rattles against the cold metal walls. A couple of barf bags later, the ship docks on some kind of solar-fueled module, a floating set-piece that spins in circles for no other reason than to look cool. Marina senses something is off with the module, but ground control assures her everything is going as planned… until she notices blood dripping from the ceiling. Somehow, inexplicably, there’s a man in there. It’s not immediately clear how he (Shamier Anderson) got stuck in the ceiling, but there are bigger things to worry about. The trapped man damaged the life support system, and there’s now only enough oxygen on board for three people, which means it’s time to play a game of Lifeboat: The Space Edition.

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All glib jokes aside, despite the somewhat absurd premise, the film works as a fascinating allegory, using the predicament and people on board, who were chosen for their decision making, as a way to examine moral crises among human beings. Even in space, they have tough decisions to make. They’ve been sent to Mars to escape a world of tough decisions, but Penna argues that there’s no escaping the dilemmas that haunt us on a day-to-day basis. 

Small and relatable moments are thrown in to keep these dilemmas interesting: wry jokes, snoring, boredom, backstory, a conversation about John Coltrane. The ship also keeps us engaged, thanks to Marco Rosser‘s production design and Klemens Becker‘s zero-gravity cinematography. Hallways spin in circles; rooms come and go as the camera glides across the ship like an astronaut in orbit. Mars is the module’s last stop, the sunset at the end of the desert, and the only place with oxygen.

With a story so vast and expansive and breathtakingly tense, “Stowaway” is surprisingly realistic. You actually feel like you’re in space, running out of oxygen as the clock ticks faster. If the initial conceit, a man trapped in a spaceship mysteriously, feels weak, the craft of tension and actors leapfrogs over this suspension-of-disbelief issue quickly. However, as captivating as “Stowaway” is, the film is not without problems. The third act, in particular, gets derailed, bogged down by repetition. Kendrick is forced to climb the ship for 30 minutes, and she isn’t given enough to do.

Ultimately, however, “Stowaway” is surprisingly decent despite the drag near the finale. It’s the story of humanity’s attempt to escape the hardships of reality. It’s a trip that proves impossible, but there are glimmers of light in the darkness. Can our astronauts find a way to cling to that light? Despite the risks and troubles of the journey, sometimes humans can surprise us with optimism, resilience, bravery, and sacrifice. [B]