Review: ‘Sputnik’ Is A Thoughtful Creature Feature With Novel Genre Twists

At first glance, Egor Abramenko’s directorial debut Sputnik bears a superficial resemblance to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien. The premise? A cosmonaut (Pyotr Fyodorov) survives a harrowing incident in space and a frightening crash, bringing a dangerous extraterrestrial parasite with him, a deadly and unprecedented creature that lives inside him. The young doctor Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina) is assigned to examine the Soviet hero in depth—the entity appears to have a parasitic attachment to its host. What is the nature of that attachment, and can they be separated?

It’s this premise that sets the film on an entirely different path from the initial invited comparison. The entity in question sports both a unique and interesting creature design, but it’s one of the few horror entities that coexists with its host in a relatively non-destructive manner. The film is a horror film, there are considerable moments of gore and threat, but the driving force of the plot is a scientific mystery to analyze the incomprehensible. Sputnik is a creature feature concerned more with understanding a creature from a scientific lens than a militaristic one, and the crux of the film isn’t a protagonist trying to destroy a creature at all costs, but first and foremost to understand it against the militaristic impulse to destroy or, worse, to use it in destruction.

The lead performances are solid overall. Akinshina’s turn as the scientist is a complex one—aloof, curious, and professional yet brave and compassionate—and she pulls it off admirably. The film’s lead antagonist, Fyodor Bondarchuk’s Colonel Semiradov, isn’t exactly the brash, hard military man of so many films—standoffish and down to business, sure, but it’s interesting to watch him navigate the bounds of shady, off-the-grid science. And the cosmonaut in question at first has relatively little to do—but as events unfold he navigates well the experience of a man going through an otherworldly process.

The production design and cinematography build a convincing picture of an extraterrestrial menace inside a secretive, off-the-grid experimental facility. The building’s design has, in proper Soviet military fashion, a significant array of blocky architecture, muted colors, and purely functional spaces, but the camera work and blocking ebb and flow from inside to outside,and in and around the facility, without feeling monotonous or muted. Altogether it’s a well made film whose technical components compliment the story and help pull the viewer in.

Overall Sputnik is an excellent creature feature with a solid and efficient but engaging story, well executed moments of body horror, strong performances, and unique creature design. Most importantly, Sputnik sports a novel enough twist on an otherwise common sci-fi horror premise to feel like it asks its own questions and treads its own path. Its a film that subtly provokes thought without beating the audience over the head with them; if you’re looking for mere monster horror you can find it, but the pieces are there to dig deeper. Bottom line: it works, it’s fun, and it’s worth your time.

Sputnik debuts 8/14 on VOD in the U.S.