Movie Review - Stowaway (2021)

Last year, Netflix released a series called Away (2020) that was about a group of astronauts that are traveling to Mars. Along the way, something goes wrong and one of the basic things that the astronauts need to survive is in short supply and they have to figure out a solution or they'll all die. This film is essentially the same thing. The only difference is that in Away, the one basic thing is water. In this film, directed and co-written by Joe Penna, that one basic thing is oxygen. Both Away and this film have female astronauts who are the leaders of the overall mission. Both have similar solutions that they ultimately reach. Even the titles to both are similar. Both are being distributed by the same company. It can't be a coincidence. Both these shows are timely, given the news this year of NASA's Perseverance rover landing on Mars. NASA's focus on Mars has been significant this past decade, which has been inspiring a lot of media. Yet, really, the true inspiration for both has got to stem back to Apollo 13 (1995), which set the space, survival film template, a template followed by both this film and Away.

The benefits of Away over this film are clear. Away was a series, so it had more time to develop its characters and have us understand and empathize with them. It's not to say that a film couldn't develop its characters and have us understand them as well. This film simply does the bare minimum, which is barely enough because this film is really about a moral dilemma that becomes the center of what's at conflict. Yet, the film doesn't play with that dilemma, as much as it could have. This would've been fine if like Gravity (2013), the film could've become a great action spectacle to behold, and it does become that somewhat. It's difficult to top the amazing spectacle that was Gravity. The recent Brad Pitt film Ad Astra (2019) did, but Penna isn't trying to do so.

Toni Collette (Little Miss Sunshine and The Sixth Sense) stars as Marina Barnett, the commanding officer of a spaceship that is headed to Mars to conduct research about sustaining life there. We learn pretty much nothing else about her. All we know is that she's in charge. She's in charge of her three-person mission. Not long after her ship takes off, nearly 12 hours after take-off, she finds that there is a fourth person aboard the ship who wasn't supposed to be there and was totally unaccounted.

Now, most films or TV shows with science-fiction or other fantasy elements require a suspension of disbelief where you have to accept the premise or world that's presented. That's easier for some premises or ideas than it is for others. The idea that this fourth person named Michael Adams, played by Shamier Anderson (Goliath and Wyonna Earp), was hidden aboard the ship and the way he was hidden defies a lot of credulity and sets the film off on the wrong foot that we're not going to be dealing with particularly smart people or a particularly smart screenplay. The film wants you to accept that this fourth person was hidden accidentally on board but how he's hidden defies that idea that it was an accident. Yet, we have no choice but to accept it was an accident.

Anna Kendrick (Pitch Perfect and Up in the Air) stars as Zoe Levenson, an astronaut who is part of the three-person crew. She also functions as the medical officer. When it's revealed that the machine that provides oxygen for the crew to breath has been broken as a result of the fourth person's presence, Zoe is basically told that the fourth person would have to be killed and removed from the ship. This is the moral dilemma that dominates the film. Zoe is of course against the idea of killing the fourth person and she pushes back against the others who do like the third crew member named David Kim, played by Daniel Dae Kim (Hawaii Five-0 and Lost).

It's a similar dilemma that's occurred in several survival films. One such is Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). However, one would think that this film would escalate the possible responses to that dilemma as extreme as they could be. One would think that the film would perhaps turn violent as a result. One would think that we would see more of what are described as the 7 stages of grief. In short, one would think we would see more drama. It's commendable that Penna's film doesn't devolve into histrionics, but, since Penna's script isn't The Martian (2015), there isn't going to be some great intellectual answer or solution either. It comes down to seeing Kendrick's character do a spacewalk, which could be an interesting visual for some.

Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 56 mins.

Available on Netflix.