Review: "Stowaway" on Netflix
Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 11:00PM 
Shamier Anderson is the titular "Stowaway"
One common trope in space movies is daddy issues. Whether it involves trying to find one’s dad in space or a sad father dealing family issues, as this 2019 Vulture article points out, it's a constant in outer-space movies. That's been especially true of this last decade with First Man, Interstellar, Ad Astra, and Netflix’s very recent space venture The Midnight Sky. But a surprise development! The new space movie Stowaway, from writer/director Joe Penna, is the rare film to abandon that trend altogether. The central quartet have struggles but not one of them is a daddy issue.
Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), and medical researcher Zoe Levensen (Anna Kendrick) barely touch on their respective home lives as they make their way to Mars for a two-year space mission...
Instead of reeling from the personal sacrifices they make by leaving their loved ones, they're focused on ensuring they’re able to survive their way to Mars once the discovery of Michael (Shamier Anderson), a stowaway, causes drastic complications. Michael has accidentally destroyed a carbon dioxide scrubber as the crew discover him. There won't be enough oxygen for all four people to live through the mission.
Despite Michael being an easy-going person who helps the crew whenever he can, Marina and David view him as a liability. Meanwhile, Zoe tries convincing them to spare his life any way they can because even if it’s not something her fellow crew members are eager to do, she’s still aghast that they’re willing to take someone’s life. Thanks to the solicitous performances from Anna Kendrick and Shamier Anderson, the Zoe and Michael scenes are highlights. Their casual interactions and Michael's own backstory give the fateful decision the crew must make even more tension.
Minus a thrilling stepping out into space sequence, the entire picture has all four characters confined into one portion of the ship. As they engage in heated arguments within that small space, Stowaway becomes a fretfully claustrophobic experience. One that benefits from being a strict morality tale as opposed to a film like the aforementioned The Midnight Sky which, in addition to its copout twist to fit the “daddy issues” trope, faltered by attempting to find a medium between being a meditative survival story and an adrenaline-fueled visual spectacle when it worked more as the former.
That being said, Stowaway still suffers from a disappointingly abrupt ending. Toni Collette has the most underwritten character. Collette is customarily terrific even if she’s stuck playing an archetypal hard-ass captain who has to make all the tough decisions in times of crisis. Daniel Dae Kim is in similar amazing form as David Kim, letting his warring eyes show that David at constant odds with his crew’s plan. If one has to pick an MVP from this in-sync acting quartet, it's arguably Kim.
His performance is a fine embodiment of the compelling moral ambiguity of the film. With no hero or villain, Stowaway is an exemplary exercise in ethicality that’ll please those who love intimate science fiction and the performers involved as well as anyone who may want a break from films with celestial paternal troubles. B+
Reader Comments (4)
Saw it the other day, and while I aprecciate where they wanted to go, I thought it was rather slow and somewhat boring, and didn't feel that the ending was earned that naturally... I thought that a similar premise was infinitely better handled in Danny Boyle's "Sunshine". *** / C for me.
Around fifty years ago as a teenage science fiction geek, I read "The Cold Equations", a short story that's the classic treatment of the too-many-passengers-for-life-support plot. This story was later made into an episode of the 80s Twilight Zone, and a Sci-Fi Channel (not yet "SyFy") movie - and there have been other adaptations. So this idea has been done before, and better.
I had high hopes for this flick. I initially was very taken with the level of detail in the production design, the seeming dedication to hard science, and these are all actors I like a lot. But I thought it went off the rails pretty quickly, and by the last act I didn't even care who was going to survive: I actually fast-forwarded through most of the heroic action sequences to retrieve more oxygen.
This film wanted to be the next Gravity or The Martian... Alas, no.
It's not "They're won't be enough oxygen ". That should be "There won't be enough oxygen".
Thanks for sharing the info