Cosmonauts and critters are the order of the day in chilly Russian thriller ‘Sputnik’

Set in the Soviet-era, this gripping sci-fi horror film communicates the terror of something truly alien.

Oksana Akinshina in 'Sputnik' Source: SBS

It’s a little surprising that we don’t get more Russian science fiction/horror mash-ups. The Cold War/Space Race era certainly lends itself to the subgenre, and the notion of staunch Soviet materialism smacking up against the mind-breaking, Lovecraftian indifference of the universe has a different flavour than Western (well, American, mostly) individualism doing the same. For sure, we’ve got Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Stalker (1979) there, but imagine how a crew of doughty cosmonauts might have fared against Alien’s rapacious xenomorph.

Russian language thriller Sputnik (2020) answers that question, sort of. Set in 1983, it follows psychiatrist Dr. Tatyana Klimova (Oksana Akinshina, familiar from arthouse mainstay Lilya 4-Ever) as she’s sent to Kazakhstan to interview cosmonaut Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov), the only survivor of a crashed Soviet spacecraft. It soon emerges – quite literally – that Konstantin has brought something back with him: a large, wormlike, extra-terrestrial lifeform that emerges from his mouth at night while he is unconscious.

Colonel Semiradov (Fyodor Bondarchuk), commander of the military facility where Konstantin is being held, wants to separate Konstantin and the creature, but it seems that the creature is the reason that Konstantin survived the horrific wounds he suffered in the crash and now appears to be in perfect health. Is their relationship parasitical, symbiotic, or something even deeper and stranger?

For fans of horror, science fiction and their hybrids, Sputnik ticks a lot of familiar boxes. There’s a mysterious event, an alien creature posing a threat from one direction, and a faceless and implacable institution menacing us from another. In the Alien universe we frequently get critiques of unchecked capitalism as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation tries to acquire otherworldly creatures for exploitation in its Bioweapons Division. Here, it’s the Soviet military, as represented by Colonel Semiradov, who want the same thing, and with just as little regard for what happens to the workers tasked with the job.

Konstantin (Pyotr Fyodorov) in ‘Sputnik’. Source: Distributor

It’s all the same to our interloping alien, in any case. Director Egor Abramenko and screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrey Zolotarev have given us a cosmic critter for the ages: a sleek, sickly grey legless thing with a cluster of black spider-like eyes. The creature is at its most unsettling when it’s just looking at things, inclining its misshapen head, and we’re asked to contemplate just what’s going on in its mind. Abramenko’s quiet, austere direction adds to the unease; the film knows that the alien’s mere presence is more frightening than any generic jump scare.

The thrust of the plot is Dr. Klimova trying to figure out, like us, exactly what the creature nestled in Konstantin’s chest cavity does want. Increasingly, it becomes apparent that the connection between the cosmonaut and the creature is not just physical, and Klimova must figure out where one ends and the other begins, psychologically speaking – or if there is any demarcation at all.

This question of identity and the loss of self takes us away from our Alien comparisons, as fun as they are, and more towards John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), which also dealt with the obliteration of the self in the face of alien infection (the 2011 prequel, also titled The Thing, has even more in common with Sputnik). But it also takes us closer to home when we realise that loss of individuality and the sublimation of the self in submission to a greater, monolithic other is a very Russian anxiety – of course such themes are going to emerge in post-Soviet cinema, even in fun, B-grade monster movies.

The result is a horror film that sits comfortably on the shelf alongside its genre-mates, even when the context of its creation lends it whole new meanings. Not just a creature feature, it manages to communicate the terror and awe of encountering something truly alien, genuinely unknowable and outside our entire frame of reference. That’s a rare flavour of horror, and connoisseurs of the genre will absolutely eat it up.