Things get weird but not weird enough in the slow burn slog, The Astronaut, which stars Kate Mara as a NASA astronaut who violently returns to Earth with no recollection of what happened and only a mild panic about a necrotic bruise spreading its way across her body.
The Astronaut is a rather toothless mystery about a poor woman stuck in a remote safe house as part of a cosmic quarantine, while she begins to see shadow beings stalking her, objects floating in front of her, and alarming black lesions appearing on her skin. We stick with Mara's Sam as she very boringly underreacts to terrifying circumstances in the off chance that they're only in her head. All of this leads to a strikingly benign "twist" that just leaves you going "huh, okay."
The Astronaut doesn't go far enough, one way or the other. It frustratingly resides in the soft, safe middle, which is probably the most offensive way to use the talented cast and the few millions spent on production. It's not body horror, nor is it enjoyable family fare; it's thriller-lite, which sadly represents so much of the streaming landscape (though The Astronaut landed a theater run for Spooky Season).
First time writer/director Jess Varley has a good eye for visuals and effectively creates a couple moments of nice tension, but the end reveal is thin. It's risky to make a movie that's heavily dependent on a twist, because that sucker better be worth it, right? And taking your time with the paranoia build only allows the viewer more opportunities to try and solve the puzzle on their own. If the ace up your sleeve isn't even close to being as imaginative as what we can concoct, your third act is going to fizzle. You also don't want your movie to feel like the bulk of it was awkwardly reverse-engineered from the twist, and unfortunately that's definitely how The Astronaut feels.
The Astronaut is largely a one-woman show, though Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Luna are also on hand as Sam's adoptive father and estranged husband, respectively. Young Scarlett Holmes plays Sam's daughter Izzy, representing the idea of Sam being split between her two life passions: her family, and space. For the sake of keeping mystery levels high, no one exhibits clear communication here, never going the extra mile and saying that extra sentence or two that we want them to say. It's clear, though, that Sam's interstellar ambitions have split her family apart, and that her drive to get sent back to space is so strong that she willfully ignores telltale horror movie signs of galactic chicanery.
There's nothing egregiously bad about The Astronaut; it's just limp, and not in execution, but in underwhelming themes and ideas. Keeping things simple in the sci-fi landscape can be a boon if executed properly, but this film feels too cautious. It's not out to challenge sensibilities or present anything new, and so when you have a space flick with ultimately nothing to say, you have something to actually mourn.
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